Dream Town
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3.9 • 372 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Private investigator and World War II veteran Aloysius Archer heads to Los Angeles, the city where dreams are made and shattered, and is ensnared in a lethal case in this latest thriller in #1 New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci’s Nero Award-winning series.
It’s the eve of 1953, and Aloysius Archer is in Los Angeles to ring in the New Year with an old friend, aspiring actress Liberty Callahan, when their evening is interrupted by an acquaintance of Callahan’s: Eleanor Lamb, a screenwriter in dire straits.
After a series of increasingly chilling events—mysterious phone calls, the same blue car loitering outside her house, and a bloody knife left in her sink—Eleanor fears that her life is in danger, and she wants to hire Archer to look into the matter. Archer suspects that Eleanor knows more than she’s saying, but before he can officially take on her case, a dead body turns up inside of Eleanor’s home . . . and Eleanor herself disappears.
Missing client or not, Archer is dead set on finding both the murderer and Eleanor. With the help of Callahan and his partner Willie Dash, he launches an investigation that will take him from mob-ridden Las Vegas to the glamorous world of Hollywood to the darkest corners of Los Angeles—a city in which beautiful faces are attached to cutthroat schemers, where the cops can be more corrupt than the criminals . . . and where the powerful people responsible for his client’s disappearance will kill without a moment’s hesitation if they catch Archer on their trail.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
David Baldacci’s third Aloysius Archer mystery, set in 1953, paints a dreamy portrait of golden-age Hollywood—until a chilling murder turns it into a nightmare. At first, Baldacci’s World War II veteran turned private eye is reluctant to take on frightened screenwriter Eleanor Lamb’s case. But when she goes missing—and the body of another detective is found in her house—Archer dives into an unpredictable investigation that pits him against mobsters and crooked cops. Baldacci cultivates an immersive sense of the era that feels straight out of a hardboiled detective novel by Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, but you don’t need to have read them, or the other Archer books, to get into this. He nails the clothes, the cars, and even the food, but it’s his grim understanding of Hollywood sexism that makes the story feel eerily timeless. Narrators Edoardo Ballerini and Brittany Pressley heighten the experience, imbuing each character with their own distinctively pulpy personality. Dream Town is a really great listen from a thriller master.
Customer Reviews
Fun Read
Good story, good build of characters