 First edition | |
| Author | Ross Macdonald |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Bill English |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Lew Archer |
| Genre | Mystery |
| Publisher | Knopf |
Publication date | 1949 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
| Pages | 245 |
| Followed by | The Drowning Pool |
The Moving Target is a detective novel by writer Ross Macdonald, first published by Alfred A. Knopf in April 1949. [1]
The Moving Target introduces the detective Lew Archer, who was eventually to figure in a further seventeen novels. Up to this point Macdonald had been writing under the name Kenneth Millar, but adopted the pseudonym John Macdonald for this one. His first drafts were begun in 1947, using the working title of The Snatch; its style was meant to be a refinement on hardboiled fiction, featuring a successor to Philip Marlowe. [2] Macdonald's publisher was dissatisfied with the quality of the writing when it was first submitted and only accepted it after considerable revisions and a change of title. [3] The new title derived from a conversation that Archer has in the novel with a young woman who describes the craving for excitement and risk-taking of her post-war generation as being like driving fast in hope of meeting "something utterly new. Something naked and bright, a moving target in the road." [4]
For the book, Macdonald created the fictional city of Santa Teresa, a version of Santa Barbara, California. [5] The city is portrayed as divided between a rich class corrupted by easy living who live in the canyons above it and a poor underclass, many of them non-white.
Anthony Boucher greeted the novel enthusiastically in The New York Times Book Review: "Human compassion and literary skill returns the much-abused hard-boiled detective story to its original Hammet-high level." [6] Raymond Chandler, on the other hand, dismissed Macdonald's literary homage in a private letter not published until 1962 as the work of a "literary eunuch". [7]
Lew Archer is a 35-year-old private eye based in Los Angeles. He is hired by the crippled wife of millionaire Ralph Sampson to discover what has happened to him since he disappeared after recently landing at Burbank Airport. Archer begins by interviewing Sampson's pilot Alan Taggert and his flirtatious daughter Miranda at their Santa Teresa villa before going downtown to talk to the family lawyer, Bert Graves, an old friend of Archer's from before World War 2. A lead takes him to Fay Estabrook, an aging Hollywood film star whom he later picks up during a night's drinking, but when he takes her home he is interrupted by Fay's husband, the gun-toting crook Dwight Troy.
On the way back, Archer drops in on a run-down bar called The Wild Piano and listens to a boogie performance by convicted addict Betty Fraley. When he starts questioning her about Sampson, she turns him over to a thug called Puddler and he is only saved from a bad beating by Taggert, who is also there on Sampson's trail. The following day Archer discovers that The Wild Piano's owner is Troy, who appears to be a crook down on his luck. He then drives to the Sampson home, where a letter has been received that makes it seem that Sampson has been kidnapped.
Among other things that emerge about Sampson is that Troy is his business associate and that he gifted a mountain hunting lodge to a religious cult leader called Claude as a temple. After Archer and Miranda go to search this for some trace of Sampson, a ransom demand arrives at the villa. Graves and Taggert arrange to drop the money while Archer waits to follow the kidnapper's car. However, its driver is shot and the other members of the gang get away.
While trying to find out more about the dead driver at a truck stop, a truck driven by Puddler draws up which Archer tails to Claude's mountain temple. Eventually it emerges that Sampson and Troy have been using it as a drop-off point to smuggle illegal Mexican immigrants over the border and then hire them out at low pay rates to local ranchers. Archer is captured there by Troy, who acts with surprise when he hears of the kidnap. Puddler drives him back down to a dock on the coast and is drowned in a fight while Archer returns to the villa. There he learns from Graves that the dead kidnapper was Betty Fraley's brother, Eddie; Taggert is revealed to be Betty's lover and complicit in Sampson's kidnapping. When Taggert tries to shoot Archer, he is shot instead by Graves.
Archer tracks down Eddie's sister, who is being tortured by Troy to reveal where Sampson is being held captive. Archer rescues her but is knocked unconscious from behind when he gets to the place. Graves arrives half an hour later to bring him round and they discover Sampson's body, strangled but still warm. On the drive back Archer accuses Graves of the murder. He had just married Miranda, who stood to inherit over a million dollars on her father’s death. Sickened at the realisation of how the lust for money has twisted all connected with the crime, Graves turns himself in.
The novel became the basis for the 1966 Paul Newman film Harper , when Pocket Books retitled a reprint of the novel Harper without permission as part of the movie tie-in. [8]
Mystery is a fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character is often a detective, who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts presented to the reader. Some mystery books are non-fiction. Mystery fiction can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism.
Ross Macdonald was the main pseudonym used by the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar. He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in Southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer. Since the 1970s, Macdonald's works have received attention in academic circles for their psychological depth, sense of place, use of language, sophisticated imagery and integration of philosophy into genre fiction. Brought up in the province of Ontario, Canada, Macdonald eventually settled in the state of California, where he died in 1983.
Margaret Ellis Millar was an American-Canadian mystery and suspense writer.
Lew Archer is a fictional character created by American-Canadian writer Ross Macdonald. Archer is a private detective working in Southern California. Between the late 1940s and the early '70s, the character appeared in 18 novels and a handful of shorter works as well as several film and television adaptations. Macdonald's Archer novels have been praised for building on the foundations of hardboiled fiction by introducing more literary themes and psychological depth to the genre. Critic John Leonard declared that Macdonald had surpassed the limits of crime fiction to become "a major American novelist" while author Eudora Welty was a fan of the series and carried on a lengthy correspondence with Macdonald. The editors of Thrilling Detective wrote: "The greatest P.I. series ever written? Probably."
The Drowning Pool is a 1950 mystery novel by American writer Ross Macdonald, then writing under the name John Ross Macdonald. It is his second book in the series revolving around the cases of private detective Lew Archer and was published by Alfred A. Knopf in the US and in 1952 by Cassell in the UK.
Blue City is a thriller written in 1947 by Ross Macdonald. The novel was originally released under his real name, Kenneth Millar, by Alfred A. Knopf, while a condensed version was serialized in the August and September 1950 issues of Esquire.
The Way Some People Die is a detective mystery published, under the author's then pseudonym of John Ross Macdonald, by Alfred A. Knopf in 1951. It is Ross Macdonald's third book to feature his private eye Lew Archer. The plot centres on the activities of heroin-traffickers, a form of criminality which Macdonald particularly despised.
The Drowning Pool is a 1975 American mystery thriller film directed by Stuart Rosenberg, and based upon Ross Macdonald's novel of the same name. The film stars Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, and Anthony Franciosa, and is a loose sequel to Harper. The setting is shifted from California to Louisiana.
Harper is a 1966 American mystery thriller film directed by Jack Smight from a screenplay by William Goldman, based on the 1949 novel The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald. The film stars Paul Newman as Lew Harper, with a cast that includes Lauren Bacall, Julie Harris, Arthur Hill, Janet Leigh, Pamela Tiffin, Robert Wagner, and Shelley Winters.
The Galton Case is the eighth novel in the Lew Archer series by Ross Macdonald. It was published in the US in 1959 by Knopf and in 1960 by Cassel & Co in the UK. The book has been widely translated, although the title has been changed in some cases to highlight other aspects of the story. In French it appeared as Un Mortel Air De Famille ; in Turkish as Ölmek Yasak ; in Finnish as Rouva Galtonin perillinen ; and in Italian as Il ragazzo senza storia. Macdonald thought that with this novel he found his own voice as a writer.
Black Money is a novel by US American mystery writer Ross Macdonald. Published in 1966, it is among the most powerful of all Ross Macdonald's novels and was his own personal choice as his best book.
The Zebra-Striped Hearse is a detective mystery written in 1962 by American author Ross Macdonald, the tenth book featuring his private eye, Lew Archer. The Coen Brothers wrote an as-yet-unproduced screenplay based on the novel for Joel Silver.
Find a Victim is a novel by Canadian-American author Ross Macdonald, the fifth in a series featuring detective Lew Archer. It was published as a Borzoi Book by Alfred A. Knopf in 1954 and mass marketed by Bantam Books in the following year. The first British hardback was published in Cassell & Company's Crime Connoisseur series in 1955, the same year that a French translation appeared as Vous qui entrez ici. At this period the author was writing under the name John Ross Macdonald and was also identified as Kenneth Millar on the Knopf dust jacket.
The Ivory Grin is Ross Macdonald's fourth Lew Archer detective novel, published in April 1952. Like most of Macdonald's, the plot is complicated and takes place mostly in out of the way Californian locations.
The Barbarous Coast is a 1956 detective novel by Canadian-American author Ross Macdonald, the sixth to feature private investigator Lew Archer and his eleventh novel overall. It was published by Alfred A. Knopf in hardcover, and by Bantam Books as a paperback. The plot follows Archer's attempt to locate a missing young woman who is associated with an upscale country club. The novel takes an acid view of Southern California society that foreshadows Macdonald's later treatment of cross-generational deterministic themes.
The Name Is Archer is a collection of short stories written by Ross Macdonald and featuring his detective hero, Lew Archer. Originally compiled in 1955 and published under the name John Ross Macdonald, more stories were added in later collections under different titles.
Meet Me at the Morgue is the ninth novel completed by Ross Macdonald. Credited at the time to John Ross Macdonald, it was published in 1953 by A. A. Knopf and released as a paperback by Pocket Books the following year. In that year too the book was published by Cassell & Co in the UK under the title Experience with Evil. There had been disagreement over the novel's original title. Knopf turned down Macdonald's suggestion of Message from Hell and Macdonald turned down the suggestion of The Convenient Corpse from Pocket Books.
The Chill is Ross Macdonald's eleventh Lew Archer novel, published by Alfred A. Knopf in their Borzoi series in 1964. Macdonald's reputation was now growing and the front cover bore the announcement "a new novel by the author of The Zebra Striped Hearse", which had been well received. After the book was published by Collins Publishers in the UK that year, it went on to gain the Silver Dagger award for 1964 from the British Crime Writers Association. A French translation also appeared in 1964, followed by a Danish translation the following year and an Italian translation in 1967.
The Wycherly Woman is a detective novel by Ross Macdonald. The ninth to feature Lew Archer, it was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1961. Earlier that year a condensed version had appeared in Cosmopolitan under the title "Take My Daughter Home". The novel was nominated for the 1962 Edgar Awards, and earlier included in Anthony Boucher’s best crime fiction list of 1961.
The Far Side of the Dollar is the 12th detective novel by Ross Macdonald to feature his private eye, Lew Archer. A condensed version was published by Cosmopolitan in 1964; in 1965 the full version appeared in the US from Alfred A. Knopf and in the UK from Collins Publishers.
Tom Nolan, Ross Macdonald, Scribner 1999