Raymond Chandler fans will be entertained. Baldacci can be a bit overfond of similes and metaphors (ocean breakers hurl "their sound tentacles"), but otherwise solid prose nicely evokes the traditional hard-boiled whodunit. After events escalatemysterious calls, the same car outside her house, and a bloody knife in her sinkEleanor fears for her life. Screenwriter Eleanor Lamb interrupts to hire Archer. The tension rises as his subsequent investigation places his own life in danger. Private investigator and World War II veteran Aloysius Archer intends to ring in the New Year with old friend, aspiring actress Liberty Callahan. Right after Archer finds an unknown man shot to death in her house, someone bludgeons the gumshoe into unconsciousness. Lamb's fears for her life seem justified when she disappears. After Lamb learns of Archer's profession, she seeks to hire him because she's gotten middle-of-the-night hang-up calls, and someone entered her Malibu home and left a bloody knife in her kitchen sink. That evening, at a restaurant frequented by such stars as Frank Sinatra and Groucho Marx, Callahan introduces Archer to her friend Eleanor Lamb, a screenwriter working on a script for Bette Davis. Bestseller Baldacci's welcome third outing for PI Aloysius Archer (after 2021's A Gambling Man) takes Archer, a decorated WWII vet who works for a detective agency in Bay Town, Calif., to Los Angeles to celebrate New Year's Eve 1952 with actress and love interest Liberty Callahan.
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