Also known as The Moving Target, this features an early script by screenwriting guru William Goldman, who went on to win Oscars for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men. Paul Newman plays a Chandleresque private eye in the missing persons business, and Lauren Bacall the wealthy client who hires him to find her spouse. From the moment private eye Harper recycles a binned ingredient to make a breakfast beverage, we know the territory: a detective, with only honour to sustain him, up against the idle rich with time on their hands and murder on their minds. Even if you do guess the ending, Goldman's pungent adaptation of Ross MacDonald's novel, Jack Smight's pacey direction and Newman's confident portrayal of the LA gumshoe make this a classy and enjoyable thriller. A sequel, The Drowning Pool, followed nine years later.

Harper is a cynical private eye in the best tradition of Bogart. He even has Bogie's Baby hiring him to find her missing husband, getting involved along the way with an assortment of unsavory characters and an illegal-alien smuggling ring.