The Underground Man
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: price clipped dj
In the sun-scorched canyons of Santa Teresa, California, a brushfire ignites more than the parched hillsides — it sets ablaze a labyrinthine mystery of murder, kidnapping, and long-buried family secrets that only private investigator Lew Archer can hope to unravel. The Underground Man opens with a seemingly chance encounter between Archer and a young father named Stanley Broadhurst, whose disappearance, alongside a murdered body and a missing child, pulls Archer deep into the tangled histories of three generations of a California family. Ross Macdonald constructs a narrative as tightly coiled as a rattlesnake, where the sins of the past reach up through the scorched earth to drag the present into ruin. Widely regarded as one of the crowning achievements in American hardboiled detective fiction, The Underground Man illustrates Macdonald's singular gift for fusing the procedural thriller with the emotional weight of Greek tragedy. The novel argues, with quiet but devastating force, that violence is never spontaneous — it is always inherited, always a consequence of what has been hidden underground, whether literally or psychologically. Macdonald's prose is economical yet lyrical, and Archer himself is rendered not as a swaggering hero but as a compassionate witness to human frailty. A *New York Times* front-page review upon its 1971 publication declared it a work of art — a verdict that has only deepened with time, leaving the reader to wonder just how deep the past must be buried before it finally stays down.
Author: Ross Macdonald
Format: Hardback
Published: 1971, The Crime Club, Collins, 14 St James's Place, London
Genre: Crime fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: price clipped dj
In the sun-scorched canyons of Santa Teresa, California, a brushfire ignites more than the parched hillsides — it sets ablaze a labyrinthine mystery of murder, kidnapping, and long-buried family secrets that only private investigator Lew Archer can hope to unravel. The Underground Man opens with a seemingly chance encounter between Archer and a young father named Stanley Broadhurst, whose disappearance, alongside a murdered body and a missing child, pulls Archer deep into the tangled histories of three generations of a California family. Ross Macdonald constructs a narrative as tightly coiled as a rattlesnake, where the sins of the past reach up through the scorched earth to drag the present into ruin. Widely regarded as one of the crowning achievements in American hardboiled detective fiction, The Underground Man illustrates Macdonald's singular gift for fusing the procedural thriller with the emotional weight of Greek tragedy. The novel argues, with quiet but devastating force, that violence is never spontaneous — it is always inherited, always a consequence of what has been hidden underground, whether literally or psychologically. Macdonald's prose is economical yet lyrical, and Archer himself is rendered not as a swaggering hero but as a compassionate witness to human frailty. A *New York Times* front-page review upon its 1971 publication declared it a work of art — a verdict that has only deepened with time, leaving the reader to wonder just how deep the past must be buried before it finally stays down.