ROSS MACDONALD and MARGARET MILLAR
Ross Macdonald was the pseudonym of Kenneth Millar (December 13, 1915 - July 11, 1983), California-born, Canada-raised, eventually returning to California to work hard and slowly to become a preeminent mystery/detective novelist so good, so accomplished that he is now considered a significant voice in 20th Century American literature. Although influenced by the great detective writers in the generation before him, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Macdonald forged a style of his own out of the postwar pulps. His awareness and sophisticated understanding of literary history and tropes (he had a doctorate in literature) and his interest in psychology provided a firm foundation for his use of the detective form to investigate human relationships, conflicts, and tragedies. He wrote stand-alone novels (we have three here), but his great and lasting creation was Lew Archer, a man whose perspective and voice sustains the reader through 18 novels and many short stories. Macdonald is also a keen observer of Californian (and American) culture, documenting in good style a time and place and people.
His wife, Margaret Millar (1915-1994), wrote many fine novels of psychological suspense, and I include her work here as a measure of their marriage, their partnership, and their mutual influence. Of interest also is Macdonald’s deep friendship with Eudora Welty, another master of a region and a people. A volume of their letters is included here.
Collected Millar: The Dawn of Domestic Suspense: Fire Will Freeze; Experiment In Springtime; The Cannibal Heart; Do Evil In Return; Rose's Last Summer
Collected Millar: The Dawn of Domestic Suspense: Fire Will Freeze; Experiment In Springtime; The Cannibal Heart; Do Evil In Return; Rose's Last Summer
Collected for the first time: Five novels that defined the domestic crime story and announced Margaret Millar as a writer for whom no subject was taboo.
A grim locked room mystery doubles as brilliantly funny comedy; a nuanced portrait of a marriage rocked by paranoia and loneliness; an examination of a deeply flawed mother’s psychology–and its deadly consequences; a chilling noir tale about the value—or lack thereof—of a human life; and the quintessential Hollywood tale about an aging actress and the chaos that follows her unlikely demise. Humor, politics, chilling psychological insight and the outright macabre are all on display in these novels, which were formative both for the author and the generations of writers who followed her.
Fire Will Freeze (1944)
A locked-room mystery in which a bus filled with ski enthusiasts breaks down in the middle a blizzard, sending a mismatched group of strangers out into the night to find shelter from the storm.
Experiment In Springtime (1947)
A poignantly observed story of an unfortunately entered marriage, a novel that scrapes away the veneer of domestic bliss to reveal the heartbreaks, neuroses, and dissatisfactions of the mythical post-WWII nuclear family.
The Cannibal Heart (1949)
A deeply unsettling depiction of a mother who both resents her special needs child and covets the neighbor’s young daughter.
Do Evil In Return (1950)
Perhaps Margaret Millar’s most controversial book, a perfectly plotted noir that tackles abortion and the hypocrisy of the laws governing a woman’s body.
Rose's Last Summer (1952)
In this quintessential Hollywood story—clever, humorous, and thoroughly Hitchcockian—a faded actress’s death sows chaos among a quirky set of characters.