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Start giftingSleeping Beauty
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Learn moreSleeping Beauty plunges private detective Lew Archer into a fascinating and intricate case connected to a disastrous oil spill on the southern California coast. It leads Archer into a load of trouble involving ransom, a lethal dose of Nembutal, the death of a stranger found floating off shore, and three generations of the imposing Lennox family, whose offshore oil platform caused the spill.
The young Lennox heiress—glimpsed for a haunting moment on the beach, clutching an oil-drenched sea bird in her arms—has disappeared, and while on her trail, Archer finds himself journeying into the hidden lives of a family twisted by money, power, and a compulsive instinct for infidelity.
If any writer can be said to have inherited the mantle of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, it is Ross Macdonald. Sleeping Beauty is crime fiction at its best.
Ross Macdonald (1915–1983) was the pen name of Kenneth Millar. For over twenty years he lived in Santa Barbara and wrote mystery novels about the fascinating and changing society of his native state. He is widely credited with elevating the detective novel to the level of literature with his compactly written tales of murder and despair. His works have received awards from the Mystery Writers of America and of Great Britain, and his book The Moving Target was made into the movie Harper in 1966. In 1982 he was awarded the Eye Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Private Eye Writers of America.
Grover Gardner is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the “Best Voices of the Century” and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly, and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards.
Reviews
“Sleeping Beauty is particularly complex and satisfactory…It is a marvelous formula that Macdonald has found; the wonder is that he keeps improving it.”
“Ross Macdonald is either part or wholly wizard…conjuring the magic of real mystery…A masterpiece.”
“Not since the novels of Nathanael West has the theme of American innocence grinding to a stop at the polluted waters of the Pacific so consistently reverberated through a body of writing.”
“Archer solves crimes with the instincts of a psychologist and the conscience of a priest, and the mid-twentieth-century Southern California setting is a wonderful ride in the Wayback Machine.”
“Ross Macdonald remains the grandmaster, taking the crime novel to new heights by imbuing it with psychological resonance, complexity of story, and richness of style.”
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