Rediscovering Female Authors: Margaret Millar

I am a huge fan of the mystery/noir author, Ross MacDonald whose real name was Kenneth Millar.  In case you did not know, he had a wife.

Her name was Margaret Millar.

In their lifetimes, Margaret Millar was as famous as her husband, and of the two, better-paid.  Two of her novels were adopted by Alfred Hitchcock for his TV series (The Beast In View, Rose's Last Summer) and another, The Iron Gates, was optioned by Warner Bros.   The Beast in View won the Edgar Award for best mystery novel in 1956. She was elected "Woman of the Year" by the Los Angeles Times in 1965.   In 1983, she was awarded the Grand Master Award by Mystery Writers of America.  She published over mysteries over a productive career; and yet, Millar's star faded while her husband became part of the crime pantheon (i.e., Hammett, Chandler, MacDonald.)

Until the Library of America published its groundbreaking Women Crime Writers, I had not heard of Margaret Millar.  How is that possible?

It strikes me as bizarre that Margaret Millar isn't better known.  I love Ross MacDonald's baroque plots, and nothing can diminish my enthusiasm for his work. Having said that, Margaret Millar is a more natural writer: more skilled at subtle characterization and dialogue than MacDonald, more fluid in her prose.  Her novels are alive with social satire, and a view of American marriage and "gender relations" hard to find in American fiction-- and harder still in the landscape of mystery novels.  As for plotting, no one is tighter.

Millar's heroines, in particular, are vivid-- and their fragile, unhappy marriages, more so.  In The Fiend, for example, a woman's philandering husband has divorced her, but continues to "haunt" her life, while another woman pretends her all-American guy isn't fooling around with the rich, sexy next-door neighbor (whose marriage has different flaws.) In How Like An Angel,  a clever, loyal wife tries to bolster an incompetent spouse. Beast in View deals with sexual repression in a completely fresh, frightening way as a young woman runs literally from herself.  Each novel  has its own flavor, its own distinctive mystery.

Unlike  most crime writers, Millar did not create a trademark detective. Her novels have wildly different settings (one involves a religious cult) and so are less "identifiable" (in say, the way Chandler's L.A. mysteries are.)  One reason, perhaps, she was forgotten.  Or, it could be, as the astute Terry Teachout has written, that Millar's  success kept in her hardcover, and away from the emerging pulp fiction paperback world (in which reprints were cheap.)  Whatever the reason, her obscurity is undeserved. She is a terrific writer, among the best in American crime fiction.

Happily, times change. Most of Margaret Millar novels are now available through Soho Syndicate in Kindle editions-- read them, and see for yourself.   

My year of reading Noir

According to my Goodreads profile, I read over 60 books this year -- not counting the ones that I abandoned.  As usual, few on my list were new- but I'll get around to those next decade. It was a great year for catching up on the noir classics.  

Among the treasures, I'd count:

The Library of America's Women Crime Writers.  What a revelation this two-volume set was.  First, the magical Laura by Vera Kaspary.  Preminger's film of the same name is a personal favorite, and I dreaded to think that the book would suffer by comparison.  It didn't.    

Another highlight of the collection: Dorothy Hughes's In a Lonely Place.  That's a movie that I also like (by Nicolas Ray, with Bogart and the fabulous Gloria Grahame.) But how much better, darker, and more suspenseful was the novel.  One of those I have to stay up late and finish this books.

Again, the Library of America and more noir in the form of David Goodis.  I was writing a Philadelphia novel, so Goodis had special appeal since he wrote about Philly. He's a poetic writer whose voice sometimes sinks into pathos, but when he's on target, the books soar.  My favorite: The Moon in the Gutter, a delusional excursion through Philly's poorest neighborhoods, where a man's sister has been murdered.  No spoilers.

Confession:  I'd never read the novels of Raymond Chandler. In 2015, read all of them, and then read them again.  He's the master of atmosphere -- and in The Lady in the Lake, the scents of every setting are haunting.  Pine needles, old carpet, salty air, it's all there.




My ever-thoughtful sister sent me a gift of Library of America's Ross Macdonald's Four Novels of the 1950's.  Along with Chandler, Macdonald's another author I'd ignored-- and while Chandler's the master of mood, Macdonald is the master of plot.  His complex, tangled but tight, mysteries must be the best-plotted books ever.  Like everyone, I am in awe of The Galton Case, a novel about guilt that spans generations, and the ever-present prison of family gone awry. 


Another film classic, The Big Clock, led to me to Kenneth Fearing's novel of the same name.  Now, Ray Milland is my idea of the perfect ambiguous hero, and it was such fun to encounter that same moral ambiguity, and witty sophistication in Fearing's novel.  Fearing was a poet, and his facility with imagery really pays off here.