Books by Margaret Millar
Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1950s (LOA #269): Mischief / The Blunderer / Beast in View / Fools' Gold (Library of America Women Crime Writers Collection)
by Patricia Highsmith, Charlotte Armstrong, Margaret Millar, Dolores Hitchens
The Real Lolita author Sarah Weinman presents a landmark collection of 4 brilliant novels by the female pioneers of crime fiction—women who paved the way for Gillian Flynn, Tana French, and Lisa Scottoline
Though women crime and suspense writers dominate today’s bestseller lists, the extraordinary work of the mid-century pioneers of the genre is largely unknown. Turning in many cases from the mean streets of the hardboiled school to explore the anxieties and terrors lurking in everyday life, these groundbreaking novelists found the roots of fear and violence in a quiet suburban neighborhood, on a college campus, or in a comfortable midtown hotel. Their work, influential in its day and still vibrant and extraordinarily riveting today, is long overdue for rediscovery.
This volume, the second of a two-volume collector’s set, gathers four classic works that together reveal the vital and unacknowledged lineage to today’s leading crime writers. From the 1950s here are Charlotte Armstrong’s Mischief, the nightmarish drama of a child entrusted to a psychotic babysitter, Patricia Highsmith’s The Blunderer, brilliantly tracking the perverse parallel lives of two men driven toward murder, Margaret Millar’s Beast in View, a relentless study in madness, and Dolores Hitchens’s Fools' Gold, a hard-edged tale of robbery and redemption.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Copies
No copies available.
Crime Novels: Four Classic Thrillers 1964-1969 (LOA #371): The Fiend / Doll / Run Man Run / The Tremor of Forgery (Library of America, 371)
by Patricia Highsmith, Ed McBain, Chester Himes, Margaret Millar
In the 1960s the masters of crime fiction expanded the genre’s literary and psychological possibilities with audacious new themes, forms, and subject matter—here are four of their finest works
This is the second of two volumes gathering the best American crime fiction of the 1960s, nine novels of astonishing variety and inventiveness that pulse with the energies of that turbulent, transformative decade.
In Margaret Millar’s The Fiend (1964) a nine-year-old girl disappears and a local sex offender comes under suspicion. So begins a suspenseful investigation of an apparently tranquil California suburb which will expose a hidden tangle of fear and animosity, jealousy and desperation.
Ed McBain (a pen name of Evan Hunter) pioneered the multi-protagonist police procedural in his long-running series of 87th Precinct novels, set in a parallel Manhattan called Isola. Doll (1965) opens at a pitch of extreme violence and careens with breakneck speed through a tale that mixes murder, drugs, the modeling business, and psychotherapy with the everyday professionalism of McBain’s harried cops.
The racial paranoia of a drunken police detective in Run Man Run(1966) leads to a double murder and the relentless pursuit of the young Black college student who witnessed it. In Chester Himes’s breathless narrative, New York City is a place with no safe havens for a fugitive whom no one wants to believe.
In Patricia Highsmith’s The Tremor of Forgery (1969) a man whose personality is disintegrating is writing a book called The Tremor of Forgery about a man whose personality is disintegrating, “like a mountain collapsing from within.” Stranded unexpectedly in Tunisia, Howard Ingham struggles to hold on to himself in a strange locale, while a slightly damaged typewriter may be the only trace of a killing committed almost by accident.
Volume features include an introduction by editor Geoffrey O'Brien (Hardboiled America), newly researched biographies of the writers and helpful notes, and an essay on textual selection.
Copies
-
$40.00
An Air That Kills
From the Edgar-Award winning author of Beast in View, this landmark novel of domestic suspense is a gripping tale of ordinary lives ripped apart by lust, deceit, adultery, conspiracy and betrayal.
On a Saturday night in April, Ron Galloway's friends have all arrived at his Ontario lakeside vacation lodge for a boys' weekend without their wives. But as the night wears on and the host himself doesn't arrive, the party turns sour. Then Ron Galloway's suspicious wife, convinced he is having an affair and trying to track him down, arrives on the scene, followed by the police. It is clear something is very wrong.
In the hours and days that follow Ron Galloway's disappearance, the secret of an ugly infidelity comes to light, tearing apart Galloway's circle of friends and destroying two marriages. Did Ron Galloway commit suicide to escape his own unforgivable betrayals? What sinister set of circumstances brought him to his desperate end, and how will his survivors cope with the truth without tearing one another apart?
Copies
No copies available.
Beast in View
Hailed as one of the greatest psychological mysteries ever written and winner of the 1956 Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Novel, Beast in View remains as freshly sinister today as the day it was first published.
Thirty-year-old Helen Clarvoe is scared and all alone. The heiress of a small fortune, she is resented by her mother and, to a lesser degree, her brother. The only person who seemingly cares for her is the family’s attorney, Paul Blackshear. A shut-in, Helen maintains her residence in an upscale hotel downtown.
But passive-aggressive resentment isn’t the only thing hounding Helen Clarvoe. A string of bizarre and sometimes threatening prank phone calls has upended her spinster’s routine. Increasingly threatened, she turns to a reluctant Mr. Blackshear to get to the bottom of these strange calls. Blackshear is doubtful of their seriousness but he quickly realizes that he is in the midst of something far more sinister than he thought possible. As he unravels the mystery of the calls the identity behind them slowly emerges, predatory and treacherous.
Copies
No copies available.
A Stranger in My Grave
Young housewife Daisy Harker’s world is upended when a blank spot in her memory and a reoccurring nightmare link her to an unsolved murder and a decades-old conspiracy
Jim and Daisy Harker are a young, well-to-do couple in San Felice, California, and though childless they maintain the sort of domestic happiness that others can only aspire to. But a darkness exists at the outer edges of Daisy’s mind and she has no idea why it’s there. In a series of reoccurring nightmares she wanders a cemetery, eventually finding her own gravestone. According to the dream, December 2nd, 1955 is the day she died.
Street smart but honorable, Stevens Pinata is a man with his own mysteries. An orphan left on a church doorstep as a child, he isn’t even certain of his ethnicity, let alone his goals in life. As a private investigator he works with bail bonds and quick shakedowns. But when a pretty young woman like Daisy Harker comes into his office with a crazy request to “find her lost day” he is intrigued. He is too decent to take advantage of a crazy woman, but Mr. Harker is a wealthy man and who is Pinata to turn down money?
What unfolds is a masterpiece of suspense and one of the books that forever changed the domestic thriller. Millar’s razor sharp prose cuts a masterful plot and slashes at the racism, sexism, and entitlement endemic to an era otherwise celebrated for its prosperity.
Copies
No copies available.
The Listening Walls
In this suspenseful masterpiece about corrupted love, Rupert Kellogg's wife, Amy, goes missing after an ill-fated trip to Mexico—and Rupert becomes the focus of a paranoid investigation.
Amy Kellogg is not having a pleasant vacation in Mexico. She’s been arguing nonstop with her friend and traveling companion, Wilma, and she wants nothing more than to go home to California and the Bay Area. But an uncomfortable stay in a Mexican hotel takes a nightmarish turn when Wilma is found dead on the street below their room—an apparent suicide.
Rupert Kellogg has just returned from seeing his wife Amy through the difficulties surrounding the apparent suicide of her friend in Mexico. But Rupert is returning alone—which worries Amy’s brother. Amy was traumatized by the suicide, Rupert explains, and has taken a holiday in New York City to settle her nerves. But as gone girl Amy’s absence drags on for weeks and then months, the sense of unease among her family changes to suspicion and eventual allegations lead to a paranoid investigation.
Copies
No copies available.
Collected Millar: The First Detectives: The Invisible Worm; The Weak-Eyed Bat; The Devil Loves Me; Wall of Eyes; The Iron Gates
Margaret Millar started her brilliant writing career with novels featuring two very different detectives: the psychologist Dr. Paul Prye and Inspector Sands of Toronto’s police department.
The two couldn’t be more different. Dr. Paul Prye is a hero of the Oscar Wildean line whose psychological insight into human nature is rivaled only by his biting sarcasm and penchant for quoting poetry at inappropriate times. The stern Inspector Sands, on the other hand, is as dry and affectless as he is dogged and intelligent.
PSYCHOLOGIST PAUL PRYE
The Invisible Worm (1941)
Margaret Millar’s debut novel introduces psychiatrist Dr. Paul Prye, a cynical man of reason with a penchant for quoting William Blake and making enemies. When Prye finds himself first the suspect in a murder case and then the target of a murderer, he quickly sets his powerful mind to the task of solving the case.
The Weak-Eyed Bat (1942)
The poetry-quoting psychologist Paul Prye finds his lakeside vacation to Muskoka, Ontario, interrupted by nosey locals, and vacation only becomes less relaxing when the free-spirited teenage daughter of a local classics professor disappears.
The Devil Loves Me (1942)
Psychologist-detective Paul Prye is getting married—or at least he would be if one of the bridesmaids didn't collapse in the middle of the ceremony. It's a case of poison—Prye knows because when he goes to look for the ring he find instead a note left by the would-be murderer.
INSPECTOR SANDS
Wall of Eyes (1943)
Millar’s thoroughly stoic hero Toronto detective Inspector Sands uncovers a conspiracy while investigating a years-old car accident after the blind survivor claims that someone is trying to kill her.
The Iron Gates (1945)
Fifteen years ago, Toronto’s Inspector Sands arrived at the Morrow family mansion as a rookie cop assisting in the investigation of the never-to-be-solved murder of Mrs. Morrow. Now the second Mrs. Morrow, Lucille, has gone missing. Sands sets himself to unravel not only the disappearance but the cold case murder as well.
Copies
No copies available.
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.
Copies
No copies available.
The Birds and the Beasts Were There: The Joys of Birdwatching and Wildlife Observation in California's Richest Habitat (Collected Millar)
Santa Barbara in the 1960s was home to two of the 20th century’s most important mystery writers, Margaret Millar and her husband, Ken (Ross Macdonald). It was also home to nearly 400 species of bird. This is the charming story of Ken and Maggie’s quest to see them all.
The addiction that is birdwatching comes to vivid life in Margaret Millar’s delightful memoir of her early days as a naturalist. Part autobiography and part birdwatcher’s journal, it is a moving elegy to a bygone place and time. Millar brings her meticulous plotting and no small amount of suspense to these charming stories of a belligerent brown towhee named Houdunit, a larcenous raven called Melanie, and a rat who carefully ferments his grapes before eating them, to name only a few.
Ornithology was a passion for both Ken and Maggie and they devoted their lives to it with the same keen sense of detail and, in the case of Margaret, storytelling vigor as they brought to their writing. In this book, the only memoir she wrote, Millar takes us on her journey from curious amateur to obsessive completionist. It is a phenomenon nearly any birding enthusiast will recognize.
Ken and Margaret Millar were founding members of the Santa Barbara Audubon Society.
Copies
No copies available.
Collected Millar: First Things, Last Things: Banshee; Spider Webs; It's All In The Family; Collected Short Fiction
A treasure trove of Millar rarities join her final novels to form a collector’s dream anthology.
Perhaps no other installment in Collected Millar displays the staggering variety of form and ranging interests of Margaret Millar as the present volume. On one end readers will find her final two mystery novels, which display the hallmarks of the writer in her heyday; the sharp social commentary and poignant black humor both well-couched in a brilliantly devised plot. The other end of the collection sees her collected shorter works, which includes the return of two fan favorites, Dr. Paul Prye and Inspector Sands. Last but certainly not least is her darkly humorous autobiographical children’s novel.
Banshee (1983)
The moral hypocrisy of society’s upper crust is laid bare when the untimely death of the young daughter of wealthy Californian landowners slowly destroys the community that loved her in life.
Spider Webs (1986)
The motives and prejudices of twelve jurors are on full display in the case of a Caribbean yacht captain who has been accused of murdering a wealthy white client for her jewelry.
Collected Short Fiction with an Introduction by Tom Nolan (2004)
Millar may have been better known as a novelist but the short stories in this collection prove that she was also a master of the short form. Two novellas and three short stories possess all the hallmarks of her stunning novel-length mysteries, including a return to two favorite characters: The psychologist Dr. Paul Prye and Detective Inspector Sands.
It’s All in the Family (1948)
Out of print for decades, and extremely hard to find until now, Margaret Millar’s bestselling and only book-length foray into children’s literature stars a precocious (maybe pernicious) young girl named Priscilla, whose flair for the dramatic is matched only by her preternatural intellect. This semi-autobiographical story remains a delightful depiction of a pre-war childhood, even if the protagonist skews more Wednesday Addams than Dorothy Gale of Kansas.
Copies
No copies available.
Collected Millar: The Tom Aragon Novels: Ask for Me Tomorrow; The Murder of Miranda; Mermaid
Fast talking Tom Aragon, a Mexican-American lawyer turned private investigator, finds himself investigating a trio of missing persons’ cases in the always bizarre California hills.
One of Millar’s few reoccurring characters and her only foray into the tradition of Chandler and Hammett, Tom Aragon, ranks among her best creations. A sarcastic but talented young lawyer with a few rough edges, Aragon finds himself navigating one entitled nest of vipers after another, not to mention racial prejudice, in three of Millar’s most unusual stories.
Ask for Me Tomorrow (1976)
Gilda Decker needs a new bag, what with her second husband being suddenly crippled and her ex-husband hiding himself and his money somewhere in the hinterlands of Mexico. Gilda's recently retained lawyer, Tom Aragon, Mexican himself, is the best man for the job. But the deeper Aragon digs into her ex-husband's past the more dangerous his job becomes.
The Murder of Miranda (1979)
Miranda Shaw and Grady Keaton should have made for a run-of-the-mill scandal at the prestigious Penguin Beach Club. Shaw, a recently widowed woman of fifty, was seen leaving the club with Keaton, a ruggedly handsome lifeguard half her age. When Miranda and Keaton go missing, the widower’s lawyer sends his handiest man to find out where they’ve wandered off to. The clues come one stranger than the next for Tom Aragon in this often-hilarious novel of folly among the California elite.
Mermaid (1982)
Cleo Jasper is as beautiful as she is simple-minded—and now, she’s missing. Her doting brother will stop at nothing to find his defenseless sister, who fears the worst. Enter Tom Aragon, who is retained to track her down and return her to safety. Aragon soon realizes that he has once again found himself in over his head when Cleo's friend turns up dead amidst a sea of somewhat dubious suicide notes.
Copies
No copies available.