The Moving Target – Ross Macdonald (Allison & Busby, First UK Edition 1986)

This Allison & Busby first UK edition (1986) is of interest to collectors of Ross Macdonald, the Lew Archer series, crime fiction firsts, and scarce 1980s literary hardcovers in original dust jackets.

About: A good-plus copy in a good dust jacket. Boards sound and clean beneath jacket; spine slightly tanned at top edge. Dust jacket bright and striking with the bold black, dark red and green Lew Archer face design; notable wear and chipping to the head of the spine panel with some loss; minor rubbing to corners; rear panel with author photograph and ISBN barcode clean and intact; flaps clean with critical blurbs. Text block clean and fresh throughout; half-title page present. A solid and collectable copy of the scarce first UK edition of the first Lew Archer novel.

Details:

• Title: The Moving Target
• Author: Ross Macdonald (pseudonym of Kenneth Millar)
• Publisher: Allison & Busby, London
• Publication Date: 1986 (first UK edition; originally published by Knopf, New York, 1949)
• Edition: First UK Edition
• Series: Lew Archer #1
• ISBN: 0-85031-709-6
• Award: Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good+
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good+

Synopsis: First UK edition of the first Lew Archer novel, in the original Allison & Busby dust jacket. A scarce hardcover of the book that launched one of the great American detective series, with blurbs from the New York Times Book Review, Anthony Boucher, The Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, and William Goldman to the flaps.

Review: Ross Macdonald's The Moving Target (1949) introduced Lew Archer, the Los Angeles private detective who would become one of the defining figures of American crime fiction - a worthy successor to Hammett's Sam Spade and Chandler's Philip Marlowe, and in the view of many critics their superior. Hired by a melancholy young woman to find her missing millionaire father, Archer is drawn into the glittering, corrupt world of Southern California money, cults, and cold-blooded murder. Anthony Boucher of the New York Times Book Review wrote that ‘without in the least abating my admiration for Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, I should like to venture the heretical suggestion that Ross Macdonald is a better novelist than either of them.’ This Allison & Busby first UK edition of 1986 is the scarce hardcover first British publication of the novel.