Instant Enemy

Rating:
Summary: Heart-breaking tragedy told in who-dun-it format
Review: It seems that the cases Lew Archer takes on are rather straight forward looking at the outset and startlingly complex as he gets into them. This one ranks among the best of the series because of the characters involved. This time, he's hired first by a runaway daughter's father and runs into a plot against the father's employer. A subsequent kidnapping and threat of murder gets him also "hired" by the intended victim's mother. The alert reader will figure out aspects of the whole picture before the revelation, but chances are that reader will run into a few surprises.

The puzzle is definitely an important part of the total story, but it's the depth of character and the implicit tragic developments that make a Ross MacDonald story the rewarding experience that it is.

Rating:
Summary: Heart-breaking tragedy told in who-dun-it format
Review: It seems that the cases Lew Archer takes on are rather straight forward looking at the outset and startlingly complex as he gets into them. This one ranks among the best of the series because of the characters involved. This time, he's hired first by a runaway daughter's father and runs into a plot against the father's employer. A subsequent kidnapping and threat of murder gets him also "hired" by the intended victim's mother. The alert reader will figure out aspects of the whole picture before the revelation, but chances are that reader will run into a few surprises.

The puzzle is definitely an important part of the total story, but it's the depth of character and the implicit tragic developments that make a Ross MacDonald story the rewarding experience that it is.

Rating:
Summary: From back cover
Review: Sandy Sebastian was only a kid-a lost, lonely, unhappy young girl who ran away with another equally lost kid called Davy Spanner. One was a homicidal killer. Both were kidnappers, and Lew Archer was hired to stop them before anyone got hurt. Archer had followed bloody trails before-but never one as bizarre and terrible as this...The Instant Enemy.