Ross Macdonald: The Instant Enemy

Ross Macdonald: The Instant Enemy (USA 2008)

From the Publisher:
"A more serious and complex writer than Chandler and Hammett ever were." -- Eudora Welty
Generations of murder, greed and deception come home to roost in time for the most shocking conclusion ever in a Lew Archer novel.
At first glance, it's an open-and-shut missing persons case: a headstrong daughter has run off to be with her hothead juvenile delinquent boyfriend. That is until this bush-league Bonnie & Clyde kidnap Stephen Hackett, a local millionaire industrialist. Now, Archer is offered a cool 100 Gs for his safe return by his coquettish heiress mother who has her own mysterious ties to this disturbed duo. But the deeper Archer digs, the more he realizes that nothing is as it seems and everything is questionable. Is the boyfriend a psycho ex-con with murder on the brain or a damaged youngster trying to straighten out his twisted family tree? And is the daughter simply his nympho sex-kitten companion in crime or really a fragile kid, trying to block out horrific memories of bad acid and an unspeakable sex crime?

"Archer has seldom been in better form, and neither has his estimable creator." -- The New Yorker

Ross Macdonald: The Instant Enemy. A Lew Archer Novel. Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, ISBN: 0307279057 (Aoril, 2008), 240 p., $12.95.

Ross Macdonald: The Instant Enemy (UK 1972)

From the Publisher:
Back cover:
Lew Archer
"by a long chalk, the best private eye in the business" Sunday Times

Highway Battery...
He twisted towards me in the seat and chopped at my head with the loaded butt of his gun. I went out, all the way. After a while the darkness where I lay was invaded by dreams. Huge turning wheels resolved themselves into a diesel locomotive. I was lying limp across the tracks and the train was coming.

It honked its horn at me. It wasn't a train sound, though, and I wasn't lying on a track, and it was no dream. I sat up in the middle of the highway. A truck was bearing down on me, its brakes shrieking. But it wasn't going to be able to stop in time...

Inside:
THE INSTANT ENEMY
Davy's note to himself read:
1. Don't drive cars.
2. Don't drink alcoholic beverages.
3. Don't stay up too late-the night is the bad time.
4. Don't frequent crummy joints.
5. Don't make friends without careful investigation.
6. Don't use dirty language.
7. Don't use 'ain't' and other vulgarisms.
8. Don't sit around and brood about the past.
9. Don't hit people.
10. Don't get mad and be an instant enemy.

"You see what kind of boy he is?' Laurel said at my shoulder. 'A real trier.'

'Another of Ross Macdonald's admirable Californian stories and, as usual, among the Rolls-Royces of this particular stable.' -- Times Literary Supplement

Ross Macdonald: The Instant Enemy. London: Fontana, 1972, Fontana Books #2403 (?), 192 p., 25p.

Ross Macdonald: The Instant Enemy (UK 1970)

From the Publisher:
Lew Archer
"by a long chalk, the best private eye in the business" Sunday Times

Ross Macdonald: The Instant Enemy. London: Fontana, 1970, Fontana Books #2403, 192 p., 5/- (25p).

Ross Macdonald: The Instant Enemy (USA 1970)

From the Publisher:
Sandy Sebastian was only a kid -- a lost, lonely, unhappy young girl who ran away with another equally lost kid called Dave. Danner. 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

Ross Macdonald: The Instant Enemy. A Lew Archer Novel. New York: Bantam, 1970, Bantam Books #S5745, 201 p., ¢75.

Ross Macdonald: The Instant Enemy (USA 1969)

THE INSTANT ENEMY

Ross Macdonald: The Instant Enemy. A New Mystery Novel by Ross Macdonald. New York: Bantam, 1969, Bantam Books #H4405, 201 p., ¢60.

Ross Macdonald: The Instant Enemy (USA 1968)

From the Publisher:
LEW ARCHER
is hired by Keith Sebastian, a Los Angeles business executive, to find his daughter Sandy, a high-school senior who has run off with a homeless boy. Sebastian and his wife, living on the edge of affluent bankruptcy, seem unable to communicate with their daughter. Archer finds the runaways easily enough, but before he can return Sandy to her parents, she has participated in a violent crime. Archer's efforts to save the girl from the consequences of her actions, and to understand those actions, involve him in a savage plot twisting deep into the past. At least one old murder and some new ones confound him and the police. Archer himself is very nearly killed by an ex-cop who wants to keep the case closed, but he finally manages to open it and let some daylight in. The Instant Enemy is Lew Archer at his toughest, and Ross Macdonald at his most trenchant in his observations of California society.

Ross Macdonald: The Instant Enemy. A Novel by the Author of "The Far Side of the Dollar" and "Black Money". New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968, 240 p., $4.50.