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The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald
A missing millionaire, a trail of carefully hidden sins, and a detective who won’t blink. The Moving Target introduces Lew Archer in a taut, sunlit noir where glamour and greed grind together—and every answer comes at a price.
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In The Moving Target, did you enjoy ...
... a hardboiled, clue-by-clue hunt through Los Angeles high society that exposes rot beneath wealth?
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
If following Lew Archer from the Sampson estate into yacht harbors, canyon hideaways, and swanky living rooms hooked you, Chandler’s Philip Marlowe tracing the Sternwood family’s blackmail tangle will feel like home. Like Archer doggedly unraveling Ralph Sampson’s disappearance, Marlowe works the case step by step—through gamblers, hoods, and compromised elites—with razor-edged dialogue and that same SoCal sheen hiding a lot of grime.
... peeling back genteel veneers to uncover psychologically knotted family secrets driving the crime?
Beast in View by Margaret Millar
If what gripped you was how Archer’s search for Ralph Sampson kept turning up buried motives and family rot beneath the Sampsons’ moneyed facade, Millar’s suspense classic is a master class in the same register. It starts with a simple threat and spirals into a chilling excavation of identity and repression—every new reveal recontextualizes the last, much like the way Archer’s interviews keep shifting your sense of who’s using whom.
... a bleak, double-cross-riddled pursuit where every ally might be an enemy?
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
If you liked the hard-edged mood—the muscle in back alleys, the bought-and-sold favors, and the sense that Archer can trust almost no one around the Sampson case—Spade’s hunt for the Black Bird delivers that same unforgiving pressure cooker. As with Archer’s encounters with thugs and slippery insiders, Sam Spade navigates a city of grifters where loyalty is a bargaining chip and every conversation might be a setup.
... a terse, intimate first-person voice that pulls you inside a desperate, morally fraught crime?
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
If Archer’s sardonic, first-person narration—coolly sizing up the Sampson household and the sharks circling it—was part of the draw, Cain’s confessional voice lands even closer to the bone. Frank Chambers tells his crime from the inside with the same stripped-down urgency; you get that immediate, lived-in perspective that made Archer’s stakeouts, interrogations, and quick judgments so compelling.
... reversals and revelations that keep flipping what you think you know about a missing-person case?
Laura by Vera Caspary
If the hook for you was how Archer’s search for Ralph Sampson kept swerving—each lead upending the last—Caspary’s twist-rich investigation into a society beauty’s apparent death scratches the same itch. As in Archer’s case, every new witness and artifact reframes the story, and by the time the detective thinks he’s got it, the ground shifts again.
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