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The Moving Target / a.k.a. Harper
(1949).
by Ross MacDonald.
ISBN-13: 978-0375701467
“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 that remain
awe-inspiring. Those of us in his wake owe a debt that can never be paid. – Jonathan
Kellerman.
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. And 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.
If any writer can be said to
have inherited the mantle of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, it was Ross
Macdonald. Between the later 1940s and his death in 1983, he gave the American
crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity that his predecessors
had only hinted at. And in the character of Lew Archer, Macdonald redefined the
private eye as a roving conscience whop walks the treacherous frontier between
criminal guilt and human sin.
