Keith Fieldhouse reviewed The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald (Lew Archer, #1)
A Tour of Post-war Southern California
4 stars
The first of Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer series. Archer is the spiritual descendent of Phillip Marlowe and the ancestor of Spenser and countless others. Archer works in the fictional southern California of Santa Theresa, the same town where Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone later plied her trade. This book was published in 1949 and reflects that particular post-war time in the state when the optimism and opportunity following the war covered an underlying corruption. The mystery itself, which deals with the disappearance of a wealthy businessman who may or may not be on a bender, his wife, who may or may not be paralyzed, and the newly adult daughter who has eyes for dad'd private pilot but is desired by the local DA almost doesn't matter as Archer takes us on a tour of his stomping grounds and its denizens (in this kind of book, they're definitely "denizens"). Of particular interest …
The first of Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer series. Archer is the spiritual descendent of Phillip Marlowe and the ancestor of Spenser and countless others. Archer works in the fictional southern California of Santa Theresa, the same town where Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone later plied her trade. This book was published in 1949 and reflects that particular post-war time in the state when the optimism and opportunity following the war covered an underlying corruption. The mystery itself, which deals with the disappearance of a wealthy businessman who may or may not be on a bender, his wife, who may or may not be paralyzed, and the newly adult daughter who has eyes for dad'd private pilot but is desired by the local DA almost doesn't matter as Archer takes us on a tour of his stomping grounds and its denizens (in this kind of book, they're definitely "denizens"). Of particular interest is the way MacDonald explores what happens to the violence men who have been to war bring home.
