by Tom Nolan
“ ‘he couldn’t help thinking of himself’ ”: Kenneth Millar, “Chapter IV,” The Three Roads, typed manuscript, UCI; passage cut from published version (Knopf, 1948).
“ ‘a very manly room’ ”: John Ross Macdonald, The Drowning Pool (Knopf, 1950).
“the situation had its advantages”: Details of the Millars’ postwar ménage from Millar, “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“ ‘No writee, no eatee’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“He gave himself a year”: Millar interview with Arthur Kaye, UCI.
“ ‘a tough mystery in the Hammett tradition’ ”: Millar to the Bransons, May 12, 1946, UCI.
“crossed with the wide-open Jacksonville, Florida”: Macdonald interview with Arthur Kaye, UCI. Millar’s naval duties took him briefly to Jacksonville.
“much taken with Really the Blues”: Macdonald interview with Paul Nelson, UCI.
“ ‘It was the brotherhood of man!’ ”: Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“The ideal image for an artist was jazz variations”: Millar interview with Paul Nelson, UCI.
“ ‘They really spoke to me, directly’ ”: Ibid.
“Nelson Algren’s Never Come Morning”: Ibid.
“ ‘a substitute for a postwar nervous breakdown’ ”: Dick Adler, “Will the Real Ross Macdonald Please Keep Writing?” Los Angeles Times West Magazine, December 10, 1967.
“ ‘I loved writing dialogue’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“The town didn’t have or need traffic lights”: Macdonald, “Black Tide,” in Self-Portrait.
“ ‘When you grew up in Kitchener’ ”: Sally Ogle Davis, “Murder, fatalistic humor and a three-Edgar family,” Toronto Globe and Mail, July 16, 1983.
“Ellington’s ‘C Jam Blues’ ”: Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“ ‘to rise through mysteries to the serious novel’ ”: Millar to the Bransons, October 7, 1945, UCI.
“ ‘the first book of mine I’m not ashamed of’ ”: Millar to Henry Branson, July 6, 1946, UCI.
“ ‘literate and exciting’ ”: New Republic, September 9, 1946.
“ ‘a God-given ability to write’ ”: Anthony Boucher, “Murder, They Say!” San Francisco Chronicle, September 1, 1946.
“ ‘I owned a house before I owned a car’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“ ‘Just what is your business?’ ”: Kenneth Millar, “The Bearded Lady,” American, October 1948.
“ ‘Whenever I am asked’ ”: Quoted in Elmore Leonard’s introduction to H. N. Swanson’s Sprinkled with Ruby Dust: A Literary and Hollywood Memoir (Warner Books, 1989).
“ ‘I’m having my fling’ ”: Millar to Anthony Boucher, September 12, 1947, Indiana.
“ ‘like something left over from a sad and dingy past’ ”: Millar, Winter Solstice notebooks and typescripts, UCI.
“ ‘I was much intrigued’ ”: Alfred Knopf to Millar, March 28, 1947, HRHRC.
“ ‘I prize your imprint’ ”: Millar to Alfred Knopf, April 3, 1947, HRHRC.
“ ‘If you should decide’ ”: Miliar to Knopf, July 8, 1947, HRHRC.
“ ‘Very, very tough’ ”: unsigned review, “Mystery and Crime,” New Yorker, August 23, 1947.
“ ‘Raw meat’ ”: “The Criminal Record,” Saturday Review, August 16, 1947.
“ ‘Routine enough’ ”: Anthony Boucher, “Murder They Say,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 17, 1947.
“ ‘the poet laureate of sexual psychopathy’ ”: Millar to Richard C. Boys, December 29, 1952, the Richard C. Boys Correspondence, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan.
“ ‘a good deal less offensive’ ”: James Sandoe, “Suspense,” Chicago Sun Book Week, August 17, 1947.
“ ‘Blue City retains its own pattern’ ”: Nelson Algren, “Johnny Comes Marching Home,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 17, 1947.
“ ‘Unless one or two things like that happen’ ”: Millar interview with Paul Nelson, UCI.
“ ‘ten thousand good words’ ”: Millar to von Auw, September 4, 1948, HRHRC.
“ ‘I am not delighted with this sale’ ”: Knopf to Millar, October 1, 1947, HRHRC.
“Their combined earnings in 1947”: Millar notebooks and tax forms, UCI.
“a fifteen-page critique”: Appended to letter from Curtiz secretary to Margaret Millar, March 25, 1947, UCI.
“ ‘I feel we can get a much better setup elsewhere’ ”: Swanson to Millar, September 4, 1947, UCI.
“ ‘As far as the job situation is concerned’ ”: Ibid.
“ ‘By God I’ll fall back on my thrillers’ ”: Millar to Branson, August 4, 1946, UCI.
“ ‘Man chases hit-run slayer’ ”: Millar notebooks, UCI.
“eighteen pages of a tale called Hit and Run”: Millar notebooks, UCI.
“four pages of notes for The Snatch”: Ibid.
“Millar had it in mind to do a series of books with this detective”: Millar interview with Paul Nelson, UCI.
“ ‘What Bowman launched thee forth?’ ”: Kenneth Millar, “Wild Goose,” The College Cord, February 3, 1934.
“ ‘I’m not Archer, exactly’ ”: Macdonald, “The Writer as Detective Hero,” Show, January 1965: “I wasn’t Archer, exactly, but Archer was me.” Paraphrased by Millar elsewhere.
“ ‘Lew Archer was actually named’ ”: Chuck Thegze, “Behind Lew Archer: Interview with Ross Macdonald,” Village Voice, February 10, 1975.
“a few blocks east on the Strip”: Technically, the unincorporated Sunset Strip area was not in Los Angeles.
“ ‘I did it to prove to myself’ ”: Millar to Branson, May 10, 1948, UCI.
“ ‘I’m the new-type detective’ ”: John Macdonald, The Moving Target (Knopf, 1949).
“Millar subscribed to Wyndham Lewis’s idea”: Donald Pearce interview with TN. See Millar’s 1953 Ann Arbor lecture, “ ’The Scene of the Crime,” published in Inward Journey (Cordelia Editions, 1984; Mysterious Press, 1987).
“ ‘Life is full . . .’ ”: Geoffrey T. Hellman, “Publisher: II—Flair Is the Word,” New Yorker, November 27, 1948.
“‘Son of a bitch!’ ”: Anna Branson interview with TN.
“ ‘Beside the Santa Barbara Biltmore’s Olympic Pool’ ”: Bennett Cerf, “Trade Winds,” Saturday Review, May 1, 1948.
“As of May 31”: Millar notebooks, UCI.
“the dedicatee of Blue City”: The Dark Tunnel was dedicated to the memory of John Lee, Trouble Follows Me to Donald Pearce, The Three Roads to Margaret. The pseudonymous The Moving Target would have no dedicatee.
“ ‘He was off the sauce that whole summer’ ”: Margaret Millar interview with TN.
“ ‘Their talent?’ ”: Barnaby Conrad, Fun While It Lasted (Random House, 1969).
“ ‘In the past week’ ”: Margaret Millar, The Cannibal Heart (Random House, 1949).
“ ‘He would go up there’ ”: Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“To conquer his fear of it”: Millar notebooks, UCI.
“ ‘He was a great man for testing himself’ ”: Hugh Kenner interview with TN.
“ ‘highly recommended’ ”: unsigned review, “Mystery and Crime,” New Yorker, June 5, 1948.
“ ‘distinguished’ ”: “The Criminal Record,” Saturday Review, June 26, 1948.
“ ‘an astonishing stride beyond’ ”: James Sandoe, Chicago Sun, June 11, 1948.
“ ‘from overmuch psychiatry’ ”: Howard Haycraft, “Speaking of Crime,” Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, October 1948.
“ ‘the Hitchcock fork’ ”: Helen B. Parker, “Companions for Vacation Hammocks,” New York Times Book Review, July 25, 1948.
“ ‘It took me months to make it bad enough’ ”: Millar to the Bransons, July 2, 1948, UCI.
; “In Toronto, Random House of Canada gave Margaret Millar a luncheon”: “The Millars From Kitchener Succeed as Mystery Writers,” Toronto Globe and Mail, July 17, 1948.
“Millar considered her the more naturally gifted writer”: Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“ ‘Cut it any way you like’ ”: Knopf to Millar, September 2, 1948, HRHRC.
“ ‘I have a serious novel on the fire’ ”: Millar to von Auw, September 4, 1948, HRHRC.
“ ‘George Harmon Coxe . . . Ray Chandler’ ”: Coxe was a veteran Knopf whodunit writer. Chandler hadn’t published a novel since 1943.
“ ‘bitterly disappointed’ ”: Quoted by Kenneth to Margaret Millar, September 11, 1948, UCI.
“ ‘Son of a bitch!’ ”: Anna Branson interview with TN.
“ ‘Crossing from California’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, September 9, 1948, UCI.
“ ‘My drive across the country got me nowhere’ ”: Millar to Blanche Knopf, October 24, 1948, HRHRC.
“ ‘I love you better than I love myself’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, September 19, 1948, UCI.
“ ‘You’re everything I want’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, September 13, 1948, UCI.
“In a letter thanking Millar”: Knopf to Millar, September 17, 1948, HRHRC.
“ ‘Why not?’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, September 20, 1948, UCI.
“stiff terms”: Knopf to von Auw, September 20, 1948, HRHRC; von Auw to Knopf, September 23, 1948, HRHRC.
“the first entry”: When the Mystery Writers of America in 1956 updated “the Haycraft-Queen Definitive Library of Detective-Crime-Mystery Fiction” (a respected compilation of “cornerstone” titles) to include essential works published since 1948, The Moving Target was one of only twelve books added.
“ ‘It’s weak of me’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, September 30, 1948, UCI.
“ ‘I could never stand another separation’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, October 1, 1948, UCI.
“ ‘I feel like weeping’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, October 7, 1948, UCI.
“ ‘There’s no one I feel completely at home with but you’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, September 30, 1948, UCI.
“ ‘I love you awfully!’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, October 4, 1948, UCI.
“ ‘The only advantage of living in Ann Arbor’ ”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, September 23, 1948, UCI.
“ ‘Knopf is at once Olympian and dressy’ ”: Geoffrey T. Hellman, “Publisher: I—A Very Dignified Pavane,” New Yorker, November 20, 1948.
“ ‘While I hesitate to disagree with you’ ”: Millar to Blanche Knopf, December 5, 1948, HRHRC.
“ ‘It’s a specter’ ”: Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“ ‘The next chapter’ ”: Millar, “The Inward Eye,” dissertation typescript, UCI.
“ ‘Even theses end’ ”: Millar to Blanche Knopf, November 22, 1948, HRHRC.
“This would be one of their good years”: Kenneth to Margaret Millar, UCI.
“twenty-one cases of empty beer bottles”: Anna Branson interview with TN.
“ ‘We had a copy of the Berlioz Requiem’ ”: Ibid.
“ ‘I figured he ought to hear something’ ”: Donald Pearce interview with TN.
“ ‘All she needs’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, UCI.
“ ‘almost innocently’ ”: Millar, “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“ ‘Her candor has always been lovely’ ”: Ibid.
“ ‘Linda was a terror’ ”: Anna Branson interview with TN.
“a book she later wrote”: Margaret Millar, Vanish in an Instant (Random House, 1952).
“ ‘strange misspelt tales’ ”: Millar to Knopf, October 18, 1949, HRHRC.
“ ‘Boy, this is really gruesome’ ”: Margaret to Kenneth Millar, October 5, 1948, UCI.
“A couple of things happened to Linda and Margaret Millar”: Ann Arbor details from Millar’s “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“Millar had earlier tipped Boucher that he’d done a pseudonymous book for Knopf”: “I’m publishing a book in April, pseudonymously,” Millar Christmas card to Boucher, December 1948, Indiana.
“ ‘Just at the time that the tough genre in fiction needs revitalizing’ ”: Anthony Boucher, “Criminals at Large,” New York Times Book Review, April 3, 1949.
“Millar hand-carried a copy of the American Mercury”: Phyllis White (Mrs. Anthony Boucher) interview with TN.
“ ‘You can write like a son of a bitch’ ”: Boucher to Millar, March 12, 1949, Indiana.
“ ‘I fell in with the plan’ ”: Millar to Boucher, March 14, 1949, Indiana.
“a summer Times roundup”: Anthony Boucher, “Chillers for the Warm Months,” New York Times Book Review, June 19, 1949.
“ ‘the high point of recent American books’ ”: Anthony Boucher, “Speaking of Crime,” Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, August 1949. Boucher listed The Moving Target as one of “The Best Mystery Books of 1949” in his “Speaking of Crime” column for the February 1950 issue of EQMM.
“ ‘You can put this on your Hammett-Chandler shelf; it won’t be at all out of place in that company’ ”: This compliment is also a veiled reference to James Sandoe’s umbrage at Blue City ads linking Millar’s name with Hammet’s and Chandler’s—hence, a subtle clue to Macdonald’s identity.
“ ‘An astonishing book has come from Knopf’ ”: James Sandoe to Raymond Chandler, March 20, 1949, Department of Special Collections, University Research Library, UCLA.
“ ‘pretentiousness’ ”: Chandler to Sandoe, April 14, 1949, Department of Special Collections, University Research Library, UCLA; excerpt printed in Raymond Chandler Speaking (Houghton Mifflin, 1962); entire letter printed in Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler (Columbia University Press, 1981).
“ ‘the most creditable [Chandler] imitation’ ”: James Sandoe, “Week’s Best Novels of Mystery and Suspense,” “Book Day,” Chicago Sun-Times, April 29, 1949.
“ ‘All I really want’ ”: Millar to Blanche Knopf, November 22, 1948, HRHRC.
“ ‘The picaresque or something like it’ ”: Millar to Pat Knopf, February 23, 1950, HRHRC.
“ ‘Even my mother bought a copy’ ”: John D. MacDonald to Harold Ober, September 2, 1949, HRHRC.
“What he would do, he told Ober”: Ober to MacDonald, September 15, 1949, HRHRC.
“ ‘Please thank Mr. Millar for me’ ”: MacDonald to Ober, September 19, 1949, HRHRC.
“ ‘I wanted to write as well as I possibly could’ ”: Millar, “The Scene of the Crime,” Ann Arbor lecture, 1953.
“all but ruined once”: Millar notebook, UCI.
“Margaret’s kin had suffered from”: Millar, “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“ ‘I took the confession of murder by someone I knew’ ”: Beverly Slopen, “The Most Private Eye,” The Canadian, August 20, 1977.
“ ‘In Ontario’ ”: Jerry Tutunjian, “A Conversation with Ross Macdonald,” Tamarack Review, 1974.
“ ‘Montecito was a hotbed of hard drinking’ ”: Al Stump interview with TN.
“ ‘the kind of play that only a mother or an actor could love’ ”: John Ross Macdonald, The Drowning Pool (Knopf, 1950).
“Linda seemed more out of place in Santa Barbara”: Details about Linda from Millar’s “Notes of a Son and Father,” UCI.
“ ‘the spectacle of a prose writer of high attainments’ ”: Anthony Boucher, “Chandler, Revalued,” New York Times Book Review, September 25, 1949.
“ ‘Human compassion and literary skill’ ”: Anthony Boucher, “Best Mysteries of 1949,” New York Times Book Review, December 4, 1949.
“ ‘I have an idea’ ”: Millar to Knopf, February 20, 1950, HRHRC.
“ ‘Chandler’s last was just as well written as
ever’ ”: Knopf to Millar, February 27, 1950, HRHRC.
“ ‘He was one of the few authors’ ”: Pat Knopf letter to TN, October 1994.
“I . . . quite agree”: Knopf to Millar, February 27, 1950, HRHRC.
“ ‘You haven’t let me down at all’ ”: Boucher to Millar, September 8, 1950, Indiana.
“ ‘You seem to have committed yourself’ ”: Chandler to James M. Fox, January 4, 1951, from Letters: Raymond Chandler and James M. Fox (Neville + Yellin, 1978).
“ ‘Anything that fantasy can invent’ ”: Millar to Knopf, February 20, 1950, HRHRC.
“he’d insert expressionist sketches of Zanuck into a couple of Archer short stories”: See descriptions of Angel Funk and his Palm Springs estate in “Cone Girl” in The Name Is Archer (Bantam, 1955), first published February 1953 as “The Imaginary Blonde” (also known as “The Singing Pigeon”). See also description of Edward Illman in “The Suicide” in the same collection, first published October 1953 as “The Beat-Up Sister”: “In a white terry-cloth bathrobe, he had the shape and bulk of a Kodiak bear. The top of his head was as bald as an ostrich egg. He carried a chip on each shoulder, like epaulets. . . . He was a suave old fox.” A Twentieth Century-Fox.
“ ‘A fierce old man sits sputtering in the witness box’ ”: Brad Darrach, “The Man Behind the Mysteries,” People, July 8, 1974.
“ ‘He and Margaret sat through the big ones’ ”: Harris Seed interview with TN.
“ ‘It’s rather fun’ ”: Millar to Pat Knopf, February 23, 1950, HRHRC.
“ ‘pseudonymous books written, too quickly’ ”: Millar to Professor Thorpe, December 11, 1950, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
“the UCSB English faculty”: Santa Barbara’s university campus was initially known as Santa Barbara College; when its affiliation with the UC system was strengthened, it became known formally as the University of California, Santa Barbara (or UCSB).
“ ‘I grew up in a part of southern Ontario he knew’ ”: Hugh Kenner interview with TN.
“ ‘Ken was quietly persuasive’ ”: Kenner, “Learning,” in Inward Journey (Cordelia Editions, 1984; Mysterious Press, 1987).
“ ‘He was immensely valuable to me’ ”: Kenner interview with TN.