 |
|
Title: The Moving Target
ISBN: 037570146X
Author:
Ross Macdonald
Publicate Date: 1998-03-03
Publish: 1998-03-03
List Price: $12.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
 |
|
|
|
|
Amazon Lowest New Price: $5.88
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $4.15
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.36
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Customer Review: |
|
1: At some level that is hard to describe this is awfully good stuff...
I have been on a Ross Macdonald binge. Perhaps if I had more capacity as a literary critic I would know why I am reading so much of him and why I find his novels so affecting. It's certainly not the plots, which seem almost incidental to the depiction of character, just a loose structure to covey to the reader the inevitable unravelling of everyone's universally unhappy fate. All the characters are on the long or the quick slide into emotional trauma and chaos, bitter, resigned aloneness or death. After just one Archer novel the reader cannot harbor any illusions about happy endings, not for the novel, Archer or whichever sad person surives to struggle through another day.
So what is it all about? Depicting reality. Samuel Johnson said something to the effect of "nothing last long or holds true other than the just representation of human nature." Macdonald lasts I believe because he paints the dark American reality of searching, questing, dreaming for that elusive score. He seems to suggest that until we can realize that the "score" itself is not worth a hill of beans there is little hope. But his novels are also full of a great many scam artists who pretend that they have learned that but really haven't a clue. Most of them are quasi-religious con men or women. So perhaps Macdonald wants us to realize that neither he nor Archer know what to substitute for that lust for the "score." So they just bumble along trying to do less harm than good, just as alone at the end as at the beginning but with a little more circulation on them and a little less faith that there is a way out other than arriving at the finish line with as few illusions as possible.
|
2: Missing the snap of static electricity
with a new introduction by Thomas Chastain
The introduction to this book and the "Strangers in Town" collection of short stories reference MacDonald as the heir of Hammett and Chandler, but I think such assessments much overstate Mr. MacDonald's abilities.
The books read nicely, but with no depth of feeling, humor, or passion. The dry crackle of passion, like static electricity snapping off a door nob, that should be present in the air of a good mystery novel is sorely missing here. The story telling is strictly pedestrian; not bad, mind you, just not good enough to grab you by the lapels in the nicotine-stained grip of hard-boiled passion.
|
3: Lew Archer's Birth: slow but with signs of promise
According to the best online source of all things related to PI fiction, Thrilling Detective, Lew Archer "stands with the Continental Op, Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe as one of the few PI's who actually define the genre." I've read Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon, and the first two Marlow books and, thus, I knew those PIs. Who the heck is Lew Archer?
My thought process went something like this: Who's Lew Archer? Lew Archer is the PI created by Ross MacDonald. MacDonald? Ain't he the guy who created that other PI who lives on a boat? No, that would be John D. Macdonald who created Travis McGee. Oh, well, then, is this MacDonald the same guy who created Fletch. No! Still a different MacDonald. Sheesh, I thought. Somebody should have chosen a pen name.
Lew Archer is a PI in, where else, southern California. He is hired to find one Ralph Sampson. Now, being from Houston, I couldn't help thinking about the old Houston Rockets basketball player but that's just me. We follow the story from Archer's first-person POV. I think in PI fiction, where you have the one hero against the world, the first-person POV works great. It does so here, really giving the reader a taste of what it is like to be a WWII veteran who used to be a cop but quit for honorable reasons.
Confession: I started this book three times before I actually plowed my way through it. This is one of those times where a bad reader can ruin a good book. The Blackstone audio folks didn't pick well with this reader. Or was it the prose? I have to admit, there were times when I was, uh, bored. At one point, I didn't care if Archer found Sampson or not.
Don't get me wrong: The Moving Target was a good PI story. Literally, one of the culprits is not revealed until the end and, frankly, I didn't see it coming. I liked how Archer unfolded the story layer by layer. But it didn't suck me in like A Drink Before the War, The Sins of the Fathers, or The Maltese Falcon. Hmm, come to think of it, 2 out of three of those books owe a debt to MacDonald.
I've been told that MacDonald's The Galton Case was the turning point of the Lew Archer novels. From there, MacDonald created something very special. It's good to know. Otherwise, I might've left Archer to the pile designed "To Be Read...Someday." Now, I will certainly persevere.
MacDonald has a wonderful way with words. I can see why and how folks compare him with Chandler. There's fluidity to Archer's speech that is something special. I will travel again with him. It just won't be right away.
But, if I needed any more incentive, try this money quote from Thrilling Detective: "Lew Archer made possible all who followed."
That includes me. Thanks, Lew. I owe you one. (taken from http://scottdparker.blogspot.com)
|
4: He "Was Driving a '46 Car and Had a Modern Girl Beside Him"
"The Moving Target," (1949) was the first novel Canadian-American hard-boiled mystery author Kenneth Millar published under his pseudonym "Ross Macdonald;" it was also the first novel to feature his most famous, California-based gumshoe, Lew Archer. He had first introduced the character in a 1944 published short story, "Find the Woman;" "Target" would be followed by seventeen more neo-noir Archer novels.
Like most of his best work, the book is set in California, in the Los Angeles-Santa Barbara area (the author was born in California, then was taken to Canada by his Canadian parents; he lived up north through his first year at college. He then lived most of his life, and died, in Santa Barbara. In his books, he called Santa Barbara "Santa Teresa.") In the book at hand, Archer is called upon to help the Sampson family out of its troubles. Papa Sampson, a rich man, has disappeared, and is soon found to be kidnapped. In this first Archer novel, the writer uses a family configuration he will use many times again: rich, powerful father, wayward daughter or son, vain and greedy second wife. This first, post World War II, book also boasts one of Macdonald's trademark complex plots, with many characters: it's always hard to guess the ending to one of his books. Furthermore, this first book also illustrates his career-long tendency to have plots turn on family secrets from long ago among the clients, or among the criminals that victimize them.
Macdonald is always considered the first, and one of the greatest, followers of the hard-boiled, neo-noir writers Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. In this book, several of the major characters are clearly Chandleresque; this sort of thing will become less marked as the author found his own voice. Mind you, the book is well-written: if anything, it is overly well-written. But, in addition to a complicated plot, the dialogue crackles, and the nature writing is strong. He is considered to have added psychological depth and insights into the motivations of his characters to the Chandler/Hammett formula: to have combined the mystery "whodunit" with the psychological thriller. A couple of Canadian "Eh's" (they just can't finish a sentence without one) sneak into this book, or maybe it's just that the copy editors missed a few.
The book's worth reading on its own terms, not least for the fascinating descriptions of post-war LA. The geological country, of course, remains much the same, and many of the important roads are already there, but oh, the empty beaches, the orange-grove filled Orange County, the vision of Brentwood and Venice, say, as small isolated towns: the change men have wrought in Southern California since Macdonald wrote is just fascinating. But some things remain the same -- what man wouldn't want a hot new car, and a hot, modern girl sitting beside him?
|
5: Good story, nice twists, well written
I'm just getting my head around this guy and find him quieter than the other hard-boiled dectectives (Chandler, Hammet) so more will be revealed.
I liked this book and am on to the next one. I have not been dissapointed.
|
|
|
|
|
