{"id":3710,"date":"2007-04-23T01:13:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-23T06:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=3710"},"modified":"2017-11-29T14:01:11","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T20:01:11","slug":"book-report-the-instant-enemy-by-ross-macdonald-1968","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2007\/04\/23\/book-report-the-instant-enemy-by-ross-macdonald-1968\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: The Instant Enemy by Ross MacDonald (1968)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At one of the book fairs last year, I bought a number of Ross MacDonald books because, although I <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2004\/11\/29\/1743\/\" target=\"_new\">have read many of them twice<\/a>, I don&#8217;t have many of them on my shelves.<\/p>\n<p>As one might expect if one has read <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/07\/book-report-the-american-private-eye-the-image-in-fiction-by-david-geherin-1985\/\" target=\"_new\">Geherin<\/a>, MacDonald represents a transitional author in the hard-boiled detective school.  He still has his hard knock chops in Lew Archer and the Chandleresque plots, but they have a touch more touchy-feely exploration of intrafamily conflict.  This book is no exception as it begins with a disturbed young man kidnapping a wealthy oilman with the help of one of his underling&#8217;s innocent daughters and then delves into several decades-old murders amid a family tree that intertwines like a oak and poison sumac.  I don&#8217;t even know if those two things intertwine frequently, but the book compells one to try his hand at simile.<\/p>\n<p>This book and others that I&#8217;m revisiting on occasion remind me of why I wanted to be a writer, or at least what made me think I could get away with it.  Somewhere, though, my voice varied from these pieces, but it&#8217;s good to come home once in a while.<\/p>\n<p><center><b>Books mentioned in this review:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=stlbrianj-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0446358959&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=FFFFFF&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At one of the book fairs last year, I bought a number of Ross MacDonald books because, although I have read many of them twice, I don&#8217;t have many of them on my shelves. As one might expect if one has read Geherin, MacDonald represents a transitional author in the hard-boiled detective school. He still [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3710"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18137,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710\/revisions\/18137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}