When it comes to hardboiled detective fiction, I have always been more of a tourist than a resident of those dark alleys and dangerous streets. There is much to admire in this largely American crime literature form, and its two most influential and innovative contributors, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, deliver novels that work as both instantly accessible pulp fiction and a thoughtful exploration of nihilism and hope. The loner detective, navigating a world where everyone lies and danger and death are just part of the landscape, embodies the existential questions of Sartre and Camus even more than he does the puzzle-and-justice ethos of Conan Doyle and Christie.
As much as I enjoy Hammett's sober, this-side-of-cynical tales of men with personal codes of honor confronting a fully corrupt and selfish world (Red Harvest and the story "The Gutting of Couffignal" are personal favorites) and Chandler's elevation of pulp to tough guy poetry, I wasn't actively looking for another hardboiled writer to discover. Fortune and a little online searching brought me to The Moving Target, the first of eighteen mystery novels by Ross MacDonald to feature detective Lew Archer. I listened to the audiobook of Target, and as soon as it finished I tracked down a print copy from the library and read it immediately. That's never happened before.
What was so appealing that I immediately wanted to revisit this book? Simply put, it's MacDonald's writing that surprised me and stirred my admiration. I knew that, if a writer wanted to deliver a hardboiled crime story, he shouldn't try to reinvent the genre. All of the tropes, from solo detective to wealthy client to femme fatale, are effective to start and maintain the tale. At the same time, if he merely tries to imitate Chandler and Hammett, then the work will likely feel slight and uninspired. With Lew Archer, MacDonald strikes the perfect balance. His detective is independent, quick-witted, and appropriately pessimistic about the human race, but he also demonstrates an educated, distanced perspective through his first-person observations of people and situations that quickly wins over the reader.
Lew Archer is still a bit of a cipher – in this genre, it's nearly always the criminals who are described in detail, in part because they are seen through the lens of a detective narrator who wants the spotlight directed off the rock-turner and onto the wriggling creatures underneath – but MacDonald builds empathy for Archer because of the character's wit, his desire to bring order to a chaotic world, and his ability to analyze these desperate people and understand them (often better than they understand themselves).
MacDonald's own understanding of the genre is immediately apparent on the first page, as a taxi drives working-class Archer toward the seaside estates of the wealthy and the privileged: "The light-blue haze in the lower canyon was like a thin smoke from slowly burning money." Once there, Elaine Sampson engages the detective to find her missing husband, not out of concern but because he may be spending money on someone else that she had earmarked to inherit. The case quickly becomes complicated as the businessman's disappearance leads Archer to an alcoholic Hollywood starlet past her prime, an oily entrepreneur who employs a bodyguard with a vicious streak, and the missing man's restless daughter, Miranda. When a ransom note appears and a drop-off turns deadly, Archer needs to separate artifice from reality to reveal the true motive of each person he meets, despite the façade.
Ross MacDonald's writing here – especially the narration and point of view he gives his protagonist – is observant and perfectly pitched. It's a quality that looks easy to create but is not, as the wrong note or overdescription can easily tip into parody. And yet Archer is sympathetic, and the reader trusts that perspective. His complicated response to Sampson's daughter, a mix of physical attraction and avuncular protectiveness, is captured in a line like this one, as they drive along a windy and winding mountain road:
What was so appealing that I immediately wanted to revisit this book? Simply put, it's MacDonald's writing that surprised me and stirred my admiration. I knew that, if a writer wanted to deliver a hardboiled crime story, he shouldn't try to reinvent the genre. All of the tropes, from solo detective to wealthy client to femme fatale, are effective to start and maintain the tale. At the same time, if he merely tries to imitate Chandler and Hammett, then the work will likely feel slight and uninspired. With Lew Archer, MacDonald strikes the perfect balance. His detective is independent, quick-witted, and appropriately pessimistic about the human race, but he also demonstrates an educated, distanced perspective through his first-person observations of people and situations that quickly wins over the reader.
Lew Archer is still a bit of a cipher – in this genre, it's nearly always the criminals who are described in detail, in part because they are seen through the lens of a detective narrator who wants the spotlight directed off the rock-turner and onto the wriggling creatures underneath – but MacDonald builds empathy for Archer because of the character's wit, his desire to bring order to a chaotic world, and his ability to analyze these desperate people and understand them (often better than they understand themselves).
MacDonald's own understanding of the genre is immediately apparent on the first page, as a taxi drives working-class Archer toward the seaside estates of the wealthy and the privileged: "The light-blue haze in the lower canyon was like a thin smoke from slowly burning money." Once there, Elaine Sampson engages the detective to find her missing husband, not out of concern but because he may be spending money on someone else that she had earmarked to inherit. The case quickly becomes complicated as the businessman's disappearance leads Archer to an alcoholic Hollywood starlet past her prime, an oily entrepreneur who employs a bodyguard with a vicious streak, and the missing man's restless daughter, Miranda. When a ransom note appears and a drop-off turns deadly, Archer needs to separate artifice from reality to reveal the true motive of each person he meets, despite the façade.
Ross MacDonald's writing here – especially the narration and point of view he gives his protagonist – is observant and perfectly pitched. It's a quality that looks easy to create but is not, as the wrong note or overdescription can easily tip into parody. And yet Archer is sympathetic, and the reader trusts that perspective. His complicated response to Sampson's daughter, a mix of physical attraction and avuncular protectiveness, is captured in a line like this one, as they drive along a windy and winding mountain road:
Once or twice on a curve Miranda leaned against me, trembling. I didn't ask her whether she was cold or afraid. I didn't want to force her to make a choice.
Honoring its title, The Moving Target's plot is constantly in motion, with one lead progressing naturally to the next. It manages not to strain under its own weight, which sometimes occurs with Chandler's stories, and although one final character twist is telegraphed just a little early, it's a very satisfying tale of double-crosses and crimes of opportunity. Most of all, it's a novel delivered by a writer who is smart enough to recognize that the hardboiled detective genre can be liberating and not limiting if used as a canvas to explore the weakness and vulnerability of humans, wealthy and working class alike.
I already have MacDonald's second Lew Archer novel, The Drowning Pool, waiting to be read.
I already have MacDonald's second Lew Archer novel, The Drowning Pool, waiting to be read.
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