Series
Publication
Blackstone Audio, Inc. (2008)
Original publication date
1949 (Knopf)
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Description
The first book in Ross Macdonald's acclaimed Lew Archer series introduces the detective who redefined the role of the American private eye and gave the crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity only hinted at before. Like many Southern California millionaires, Ralph Sampson keeps odd company. There's the sun-worshipping holy man whom Sampson once gave his very own mountain; the fading actress with sidelines in astrology and S&M. Now one of Sampson's friends may have arranged his kidnapping. As Lew Archer follows the clues from the canyon sanctuaries of the megarich to jazz joints where you get beaten up between sets, The Moving Target blends sex, greed, and family hatred into an explosively readable crime novel.
User reviews
LibraryThing member ehines
First Archer book is solid, but not very well planned out, and doesn't have the moral heft of Hammett or Chandler. But I'll certainly read more. This is my third Archer--they need not be read in order--and the character and plotting does get better in later books in the series.
LibraryThing member lsh63
This is my first book by this author featuring his detective Lew Archer; it was an impulse pick up at my last library visit. I realized midway through the book that I had seen a movie that this book is based on Harper which stars Paul Newman. Someone on LT has also informed me that there is another
Lew Archer is hired to find a Southern California millionaire, Ralph Sampson, who has been reported missing by his wife. After meeting Mr. Sampson’s daughter Miranda, and some of his associates, which include a holy man to whom Sampson has given his own mountain sanctuary and an actress who follows astrology. Included in the cast of characters are Mr. Sampson’s personal pilot and lawyer who are both in love with his daughter Miranda. It’s not too long before Archer begins to think that maybe Mr. Sampson has been kidnapped by someone he knows.
This was a good, quick moving, crime novel much in the same vain as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. It contained just the right amount of detail and not an overly obvious conclusion. I enjoyed it very much. I definitely plan to read more books by the author featuring both his Lew Archer series and his stand alones as well.
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movie The Drowning Pool which is based on the book which also stars Paul Newman. (good choice)Lew Archer is hired to find a Southern California millionaire, Ralph Sampson, who has been reported missing by his wife. After meeting Mr. Sampson’s daughter Miranda, and some of his associates, which include a holy man to whom Sampson has given his own mountain sanctuary and an actress who follows astrology. Included in the cast of characters are Mr. Sampson’s personal pilot and lawyer who are both in love with his daughter Miranda. It’s not too long before Archer begins to think that maybe Mr. Sampson has been kidnapped by someone he knows.
This was a good, quick moving, crime novel much in the same vain as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. It contained just the right amount of detail and not an overly obvious conclusion. I enjoyed it very much. I definitely plan to read more books by the author featuring both his Lew Archer series and his stand alones as well.
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LibraryThing member Bookmarque
Again, whenever I read any ‘classic’ detective fiction in the noir/hardboiled style, I go back to the well that is Chandler. To me he is the epitome of the genre and the master of the type. It may be that the bar is set too high, however, as all others seem to miss it. Macdonald didn’t miss
The mystery was typical of its type; rich man gets into trouble, rich wife comes to Archer for help. Suspects and red herrings abound. Archer does a good job sorting them out and fending off the dames. He wears a gun and drives hell bent for leather. As a private, his relationship with the police is shaky at best. I was surprised at the ex-wife though. You don’t find that often with the guys who put bullets in their breakfast cereal.
There were some lovely little nuggets that just screamed noir and made me stop and savor them though. Here’s one from page 47 –
“Lew’s a detective,” Russell said. “He unearths people’s guilty secrets and exposes them to the eyes of a scandalized world.”
“Now, how low can you get?” asked Timothy cheerfully.
I didn’t like the crack, but I’d come for information not exercise.
Isn’t that just lovely? The novel is properly peppered with such vignettes. Perfectly pitched. Perfectly noir.
Overall though, I’d read more just to see if Archer expands as a character. It is sometimes difficult to imbue one with depth and breadth in one, small novel. Better to create one over a course of novels, much the way Chandler did with Marlowe. But in the initial impression, I got much more from him and Hammett with Spade than I did with Macdonald and Archer. Possibly Macdonald was focusing on the plot and story more than characterization, but I think one can do both.
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it by much, but he did. His characters seemed flat to me, Archer included. And he didn’t do much to give me the flavor of Los Angeles in the post-war years. He gave me scenery, but not much more.The mystery was typical of its type; rich man gets into trouble, rich wife comes to Archer for help. Suspects and red herrings abound. Archer does a good job sorting them out and fending off the dames. He wears a gun and drives hell bent for leather. As a private, his relationship with the police is shaky at best. I was surprised at the ex-wife though. You don’t find that often with the guys who put bullets in their breakfast cereal.
There were some lovely little nuggets that just screamed noir and made me stop and savor them though. Here’s one from page 47 –
“Lew’s a detective,” Russell said. “He unearths people’s guilty secrets and exposes them to the eyes of a scandalized world.”
“Now, how low can you get?” asked Timothy cheerfully.
I didn’t like the crack, but I’d come for information not exercise.
Isn’t that just lovely? The novel is properly peppered with such vignettes. Perfectly pitched. Perfectly noir.
Overall though, I’d read more just to see if Archer expands as a character. It is sometimes difficult to imbue one with depth and breadth in one, small novel. Better to create one over a course of novels, much the way Chandler did with Marlowe. But in the initial impression, I got much more from him and Hammett with Spade than I did with Macdonald and Archer. Possibly Macdonald was focusing on the plot and story more than characterization, but I think one can do both.
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LibraryThing member SaulPrentice
The first book in Ross MacDonald's (Kenneth Miller's)extraordinary Lew Archer series of socal detective novels, "The Moving Target" tells the story of a missing war-profiteer millionaire and his corrupt, broken family. it is a great read that introduces a great character.
LibraryThing member brettjames
This is the book that introduces Lew Archer, Ross MacDonald's long running private detective series. I can't tell you how many times I pull the book off the shelf and read the first page to someone. It's hard to compete in the world of hard-boiled private detectives, but MacDonald not only held his
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own when they were contemporaries, but went on to bring new life to the genre all on his own. Show Less
LibraryThing member jastbrown
At this point, I have only read the first eight books (in order) of this Lew Archer series. It feels to me as though he learned how to write an exceptional mystery novel from Raymond Chandler. No crime there.. Chandler, by the end was as good as they get! Macdonald seemed to be feeling his way a
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little with the first couple of books before really hitting his stride with "Find A Victim". They are all enjoyable, all well worth reading, but the next real standout, I felt, was "The Galton Case", the book I am reading now! Show Less
LibraryThing member delphimo
This book reminds me of the writing of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but I feel that MacDonald does a better job with the characters and the plot. I kept expecting to see Humphrey Bogart as Detective Lew Archer. The book was adapted into a movie, but Paul Newman filled the role of
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Detective Archer. The movie is Harper that also starred Lauren Bacall. As I read the book, many scenes of the movie emerged. Archer, as a detective, seems too trusting. His trust hinders his judgment. That hindrance complicates many issues. The story follows many of the film noire standards. I feel compelled to sample some more of MacDonald's writing. Show Less
LibraryThing member wildbill
This is the first volume in Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer series. I have read a number of the later books in the series and Lew Archer doesn't change very much. This book does provide some background for Archer and one of the characters is an old friend of his.
Archer says he does a lot of divorce
Archer starts looking for Sampson at the airport where his private pilot dropped him off. Then he goes bar crawling with the aging actress who is also Sampson's astrologer. He drops off the actress and goes to a Hollywood dive where the piano player has him beat up because she thinks he's a narc. All of this is standard fare for a Lew Archer mystery but MacDonald keeps the plot moving and throws in some very good dialogue.
Archer does find Sampson but anything else would require a spoiler alert. MacDonald's style is very similar to Raymond Chandler and I enjoy his writing. This is not the best Lew Archer mystery but I found it very entertaining.
Archer says he does a lot of divorce
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work but in the books I have read he is generally hired to find somebody. In this book he is hired to find Ralph Sampson, a rich man who made his money in the oil business. He is hired by Sampson's wife who is afraid he might give away something valuable while he is drunk. She doesn't care about his safety she is just waiting for him to die so she can get his money. Very quickly the family gets a ransom note and the case becomes a kidnapping. The cast of characters includes an aging actress, a Hollywood hood, Sampson's daughter, his lawyer and his pilot.Archer starts looking for Sampson at the airport where his private pilot dropped him off. Then he goes bar crawling with the aging actress who is also Sampson's astrologer. He drops off the actress and goes to a Hollywood dive where the piano player has him beat up because she thinks he's a narc. All of this is standard fare for a Lew Archer mystery but MacDonald keeps the plot moving and throws in some very good dialogue.
Archer does find Sampson but anything else would require a spoiler alert. MacDonald's style is very similar to Raymond Chandler and I enjoy his writing. This is not the best Lew Archer mystery but I found it very entertaining.
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LibraryThing member phillipfrey
I read this book a number of years ago and couldn't resist the temptation to read it again. Ross MacDonald's private investigator Lew Archer crime novels are a real treat. This one is about greed, which sends Archer on a case of kidnapping, family hatred, and murder. I have many more Lew Archer
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books and will be rereading them. Show Less
LibraryThing member Condorena
This is the very first mystery from the excellent Lew Archer series by Ross MacDonald. It lives up to the hype!
LibraryThing member leslie.98
A bit more hardboiled than my typical fare - I can see why people refer to Ross MacDonald as the successor to Raymond Chandler. Grover Gardner is in his usual excellent form doing the narration.
LibraryThing member MacDad
When millionaire oilman Ralph Sampson goes missing, his worried wife hires a private detective to track him down. Lew Archer soon discovers, though that what seemed a matter of a man on a bender may in fact be a case of kidnapping. As he investigates further, he encounters an eclectic group of
Though The Moving Target was Ross Macdonald's first novel featuring his signature creation Lew Archer, it is the sixth one in the series that I have read. Because of this, it serves as an interesting contrast with the others. Many of the elements that characterize Macdonald's Archer novels, such as the long-held secrets and connections with seemingly unrelated crimes decades beforehand, are absent from this book. Instead what Macdonald provides is a more straightforward mystery involving a grief-ridden family and the dangerous characters orbiting around them. In this respect it's a refreshing change of pace from the regular patterns that would come to characterize the series, which can grow a little tiresome when read back-to-back. This may explain why I enjoyed the novel as much as I did, even if the book did not possess the virtuosic plotting and character development that would become a hallmark of Macdonald's writing in subsequent years. Once again, variety proves to be the spice of life, even with works of such rare quality as Macdonald's.
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individuals connected to Sampson, all of whom are possibly involved in Sampson's disappearance. With the likelihood of finding Sampson alive diminishing with each passing second, Archer races to discover everyone's secrets, even if doing so comes at the cost of his life.Though The Moving Target was Ross Macdonald's first novel featuring his signature creation Lew Archer, it is the sixth one in the series that I have read. Because of this, it serves as an interesting contrast with the others. Many of the elements that characterize Macdonald's Archer novels, such as the long-held secrets and connections with seemingly unrelated crimes decades beforehand, are absent from this book. Instead what Macdonald provides is a more straightforward mystery involving a grief-ridden family and the dangerous characters orbiting around them. In this respect it's a refreshing change of pace from the regular patterns that would come to characterize the series, which can grow a little tiresome when read back-to-back. This may explain why I enjoyed the novel as much as I did, even if the book did not possess the virtuosic plotting and character development that would become a hallmark of Macdonald's writing in subsequent years. Once again, variety proves to be the spice of life, even with works of such rare quality as Macdonald's.
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LibraryThing member john.cooper
The Moving Target
The first in Macdonald's Lew Archer series (1949) is convoluted and a little crazy. It has a few awkwardnesses, such as the hero getting knocked unconscious three times in 36 hours and a cast of characters that's just too sprawling to fit into a short book, but what's remarkable
Although #1 in the series, it's the second I've read, and I can see other flaws that weren't present in #3, The Way Some People Die (1951). Most troublingly, there's a trace of authorial cruelty in the depiction of women. I'm not talking about garden-variety misogyny or the chauvinism you should expect in any book by a male author in the 1940s. The women are believably drawn and have agency and motives that are often independent of the male characters. But there is a little too much violence and a little too much cynicism surrounding these women, more than seems necessary even in a book where no one is completely innocent. I'm not sure it would bother even many female readers, given the compensating pleasures of the story, but if you think it would bother you, read it anyway and be aware that the same problem may not be present in later, more accomplished books.
The first in Macdonald's Lew Archer series (1949) is convoluted and a little crazy. It has a few awkwardnesses, such as the hero getting knocked unconscious three times in 36 hours and a cast of characters that's just too sprawling to fit into a short book, but what's remarkable
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are its strengths that include peerlessly wry dialogue, intensely vivid description, tight plotting and a solid emotional core. Macdonald's Archer out-Marlowes Marlowe. He's complex, avoids needless violence and isn't afraid to admit fear, at least to the reader. Above all, of course, he's got values and a code, the type introduced by Chandler: a man "who is not himself mean, a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man."Although #1 in the series, it's the second I've read, and I can see other flaws that weren't present in #3, The Way Some People Die (1951). Most troublingly, there's a trace of authorial cruelty in the depiction of women. I'm not talking about garden-variety misogyny or the chauvinism you should expect in any book by a male author in the 1940s. The women are believably drawn and have agency and motives that are often independent of the male characters. But there is a little too much violence and a little too much cynicism surrounding these women, more than seems necessary even in a book where no one is completely innocent. I'm not sure it would bother even many female readers, given the compensating pleasures of the story, but if you think it would bother you, read it anyway and be aware that the same problem may not be present in later, more accomplished books.
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LibraryThing member wdwilson3
I decided to re-visit the Ross Macdonald Lew Archer series, starting at the beginning. I don't think I had ever read this installment and it seems different in tone and content than the ones I remember. For one thing, Archer and all the other characters seem pretty wordy. Lots of philosophical
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conversations from damaged people. Archer also seems more of a wise guy than I remember, baiting bad guys, good guys, and pretty much everyone. But Macdonald's talent for description is already there -- people, places, even plants and geology. The book comes to life with his vivid writing. Written in 1949, it evokes post-war Southern California very well. The plot is a bit muddled but acceptable. I'll move on to the next book in the series and see how Archer and the stories evolve. Show Less
LibraryThing member magicians_nephew
Having fun with a book i first read decades ago. The Moving Target is the first of the "Lew Archer" detective series by Ross MacDonald. (They made a movie out of it with Paul Newman and called it "Harper".)
Archer is hired to find a missing millionaire in Southern California by his crippled, bitter
There are images of wealth and power, and scenes of helpless poverty and desperate hunger. These are stories driven by money and by sex. Nobody seems to get much pleasure out of either.
There is much fear and violence and much deep seated misogyny, and the "case" is resolved in a way that probably satisfies no one. The figures of the law are brutish and corrupt, and Archer moves among them like a knight without armor in a savage land.
The writing is complex and surprising and sometimes approaches poetry. I was constantly underlining passages just for the wonderful turns of phrase.
I think in later books in the series the plotting was sharper and the characters a little better defined. But this one does just fine.
Archer is hired to find a missing millionaire in Southern California by his crippled, bitter
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second wife and his sullen, just nubile daughter. This leads to a nightmare jungle cruise through the asphalt backwaters of Los Angeles, with sad women and savage men and grotesque cult leaders and a dapper crime boss who knows more than he's telling. There are images of wealth and power, and scenes of helpless poverty and desperate hunger. These are stories driven by money and by sex. Nobody seems to get much pleasure out of either.
There is much fear and violence and much deep seated misogyny, and the "case" is resolved in a way that probably satisfies no one. The figures of the law are brutish and corrupt, and Archer moves among them like a knight without armor in a savage land.
The writing is complex and surprising and sometimes approaches poetry. I was constantly underlining passages just for the wonderful turns of phrase.
I think in later books in the series the plotting was sharper and the characters a little better defined. But this one does just fine.
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LibraryThing member ffortsa
The consensus was that it is a fundamental example of California noir, imaginatively written, with very distinct characters and setting. I certainly agree. All the tropes about women, money, and the seaminess of LA are present; their congruence makes them integral to the story. And the plight of
I was struck that so much of the story takes place in Santa Teresa, which seems to be a stand-in for Santa Barbara. Sue Grafton took over the same town some 30+ years later for her Kinsey Millhone 'alphabet' series, which starts in 1982.
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young men coming back from World War II to find themselves jobless, or subordinate to older men who did not serve in the war, is true to the post-war setting.I was struck that so much of the story takes place in Santa Teresa, which seems to be a stand-in for Santa Barbara. Sue Grafton took over the same town some 30+ years later for her Kinsey Millhone 'alphabet' series, which starts in 1982.
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LibraryThing member datrappert
Could easily be a lost Chandler novel, but MacDonald doesn't write as well, although he certainly tries. His plotting is a lot tighter than Chandler's, but perhaps that works against the overall effectiveness of the story. Chandler writes so well that it doesn't matter if the story makes sense or
I read another Ross MacDonald some years ago and remember being less than impressed at that time. This time I have more hope and I plan to read his other early works to see if he improves. By comparison, however, he seems to lag behind a certain other MacDonald.
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not. You just revel in the perfection of each sentence.I read another Ross MacDonald some years ago and remember being less than impressed at that time. This time I have more hope and I plan to read his other early works to see if he improves. By comparison, however, he seems to lag behind a certain other MacDonald.
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LibraryThing member ByronDB
Easier than Chandler, and for 1948, felt remarkably current. Pretty racy.
Language
Original language
English