The Moving Target by Ross MacDonald

(pb; 1949: first book in the Lew Archer series)

From the back cover

"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.

"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."

Review

Moving is a lean, tightly plotted and fast-moving P.I. novel with snappy dialogue, underlying sexual tension and quick-sketch, sketchy characters. It is excellent, dark and worth owning. Followed by The Drowning Pool.

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The resulting film, Harper, was released stateside on April 9, 1966. It was directed by Jack Smight, from a screenplay by William Goldman.

Paul Newman played Lew Harper, the cinematic counterpart to Lew Archer. Lauren Bacall played Mrs. Sampson. Arthur Hill played Albert Graves. Janet Leigh played Susan Harper.

Pamela Tiffin played Miranda Sampson. Robert Wagner played Allan Taggert. Julie Harris played Betty Fraley. Tom Steele played Eddie Fraley. 

Robert Webber played Dwight Troy. Shelley Winters played Fay Estabrook. Roy Jenson played Puddler. Strother Martin played Claude.

Eugene Inglesias played Felix. Richard Carlyle played Fred Platt. Harold Gould played "Sheriff".

The Seventh, by Richard Stark

(pb; 1966, 2009: seventh novel in the Parker series.  Also published under the title The Split.  Foreword by Luc Sante)


From the back cover:

"The robbery was a piece of cake.  The getaway was clean.  And seven men were safely holed up in different places while Parker held all the cash.  But somehow the sweet heist of a college football game turned sour.  Parker's woman is murdered and the take stolen.  Now Parker's looking for the lowlife who did him dirty, while the cops are looking for seven clever thieves - and Parker must outrun them all. . ."



Review:

This entry in this taut, reader-gripping series is filled with especially quirky and crazy characters and situations which collide with disastrous, often laugh-out-loud results.   When a plotted killing - which has little to do with Parker - and an incidental robbery - which directly involves Parker - occurs, the master thief and his six partners (who have just completed an easy-peasy heist) fan out to relocate their missing loot, while a killer stalks Parker and the cops search for all of them.

Once again, Stark nails it.  Seventh, like all the preceding Parker novels, is worth owning.

Followed by The Handle.

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The resulting film, The Split, was released stateside on November 4, 1968.  Gordon Flemyng directed the film from a screenplay by Robert Sabaroff.

Jim Brown played McClain (cinematic stand-in for Parker).  Diahann Carroll played Ellen "Ellie" Kennedy.  Jack Klugman played Eric Kifka.  Ernest Borgnine played Bert Clinger.  Julie Harris played Gladys.  Donald Sutherland played David Negli.

Gene Hackman played Detective Lt. Walter Brill.  Warren Oates played Marty Gough.  James Whitmore played Herb Sutro. 

An uncredited Thordis Brandt played a "Police Clerk".  An uncredited Chuck Hicks played a "Physical Instructor".

Reflections in a Golden Eye, by Carson McCullers

(hb; 1941)

From the inside flap:

"... the story advances through the tangle of the emotional life of a Southern army post. The characters are strong and varied. Each is met in a revelatory moment: a captain safe only in impersonality; his golden, cruel wife; and a private mutely in love with her, watching the moonlight on her face as she sleeps, unaware of his presence."

Review:

The plot: An army Captain (cuckolded kleptomaniac Weldon Penderton), his wife ("feeble-minded" sensual Lenora), and their neighbors (Major Morris Langdon, Lenora's lover, and his sickly wife, Alison) are living in the social fishbowl of a military outpost, when a possibly-psychotic intensely-Xian Private L.G. Williams begins to stalk Lenora. In doing so, he helps bring about events that will ultimately shatter the fragile social structure that defines and restricts them all.

Bizarre, compact study of perversity, pettiness and antiseptic-toned cruelty, this: this is one of the most unique novels I've ever read; stylistically, it's incredibly different than McCullers's earlier novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which was a warm, rambly affair. It's difficult to believe that these tone- and theme-divergent novels sprang from the same mind.

This is also one of the most unsettling books I've read in a long while. Its brutality lies in taut-threatening-to-snap smiles, hissed comments and sudden, shocking acts of aggression.

The violent ending is flat and uninspired, after the creative displays of intimate cruelties that precede it. That said, Reflections in a Golden Eye a literary masterpiece, albeit a disturbing one.

Reflection in a Golden Eye, the film, was released stateside on October 13, 1967. Elizabeth Taylor played Lenora Penderton. Marlon Brando played Major Weldon Penderton. Brian Keith played Lt. Col. Morris Langdon. Julie Harris played Alison Langdon. Robert Forster played Pvt. L.G. Williams.

John Huston directed, from a script by Gladys Hill and Chapman Mortimer.