Sarah Weinman's Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives

I've had this on my laptop for some time now, but I only now delved into Sarah Weinman's new anthology Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives that has been out for a month so. As you probably know, this anthology covers the ground I've mined here in this blog from time to time: noir written by women and about women, not noir written about hardboiled and cynical men, but noir written about good, ordinary women who have babies and their work and what not. Most of the stories in the book come from the period between the 1940s and the 1970s, but there are some exceptions.

I've only read Sarah Weinman's foreword and the author introductions, but the book seems like a very solid piece of research, and the short story choices feel balanced. I think I can safely say this comes highly recommended from me. Check also Sarah Weinman's great website for the book, it has lots of additional information on the authors and their work. For my other pieces on female noir - or domestic suspense, if you will -, navigate via keywords.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Margaret Millar

Patti Abbott is hosting a Margaret Millar week at his blog here, and all I have time or patience to do is to link to this earlier posting of mine. I've done some other posts on Millar, here's another.

Margaret Millar back in print!

Hadn't realized Beast in View, one of Margaret Millar's fine crime novels, is back in print from Orion Books!

Margaret Millar's Tom Aragon novels

As I mentioned earlier, I was writing an article on Margaret Millar for a forth-coming book 100 American Crime Writers (or something along those lines, I'm forgetting the exact title - or then it is just that!). I was going to do a Forgotten Friday post last Friday on two of Millar's later novels, but I never got around to doing it, so I'll post it now.

Or actually I'm just copy-pasting what I wrote on the Tom Aragon books in my article. Tom Aragon was one of the few series characters Millar wrote about, and actually the only in her late career. There were couple short-lived series characters in her early books, but her mature phase (from around 1950 to the mid-sixties) hasn't any.

Millar's late phase is also worthy of note, even though her books from the seventies and eighties don't rise to the level of her classics. A good example is Ask For Me Tomorrow (1976) that is also one of her most traditional crime novels. The hero of the book is a young lawyer called Tom Aragon, who's called for help to search for a missing first husband. The book takes the reader on tour to Mexico, especially the poor wasteland of Baja California. Millar draws memorable characters of people living in destitude and their struggle to survive which often turns into quest for the impossible. Millar is very good at depicting Americans trying to find the American Dream, to rise from rags to riches, and their dishonesty towards themselves.

Ask For Me Tomorrow is not one of Millar's best, and neither is The Murder of Miranda (1979), which also stars Tom Aragon. Both books are a bit uneasy mixtures of social satire and the private eye genre. Millar is not very good writing humorous scenes (which is paradoxical, since her earlier books were full of satire), and the books change the point of view rather clumsily. The best parts are those with Aragon, but in these scenes Millar shows the influence of her husband - they could've well been written by Ross Macdonald (which of course is a compliment). The last of the three Tom Aragon novels, Mermaid (1982), is about Aragon searching for a mildly retarted runaway girl.

Do you think I'm right saying that Kenneth Millar had an influence on his wife, Margaret? I think I sensed the Ross Macdonald vibe in Ask For Me Tomorrow even when I read it in the mid-eighties, when I was 15 or 16. There are similar themes and plotlines, with the private eye figure (sure, Aragon is not a private eye, but still close and he acts like one) travelling from place to place and unravelling the mysteries of the past. Of course Ross Macdonald had died by the time Ask For Me Tomorrow was published, but one could possibly imagine that it was based on an outline Macdonald had made.

And, oh, the editor of the book 100 American Crime Writers, Steven Powell, maintains a crime-related blog here at the Venetian Vase. Take a look.

Salted coffee à la Lew Archer

For years I've been thinking that there's a scene in one of Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer novels, where Archer asks someone - a chef or some such - to put salt in coffee that's been forgotten on a coffee machine and reheat it. The salt is supposed to take away the bitter taste that's stuck on the coffee. I've mentioned this scene on one or two forums before - such as the Rara-Avis e-mail list -, but so far no one has verified there really is such a scene in one of Macdonald's novels.

But just the other day I was reading Ask For Me Tomorrow by Margaret Millar (you know, Ross Macdonald's wife) and there the scene was. Well, it wasn't actually what I had had in mind, but still close enough. Lawyer Tom Aragon has a cup of coffee with a woman who's related to the case he's working on and he thinks that a cinch of salt would take the stale aroma out of the coffee. Ask For Me Tomorrow is a book where Ross Macdonald's effect on Margaret Millar is very visible - in fact, some of the scenes could've well been written by Macdonald, especially the ones with Aragon. (The book changes the point of views pretty clumsily, and the ones without Aragon are not as worthy as the ones with him.) So, it's entirely possible that I've been thinking about this book - which I remember reading already in my teens, in the Finnish SAPO series in which Millar's novel came out in 1980 - and just getting it confused with a Macdonald.

Or then there is a similar scene in one of the Lew Archers. Maybe the writing couple did it on purpose. "You put this scene in this book, I put it here in one of mine."

As for putting salt in your coffee, just read this conversation thread.

And by the way, here's a recent post by Steve Lewis about Millar. There's some interesting discussion in the comment section.

Margaret Millar

I've been writing an entry for a forth-coming book 100 American Crime Writers on Margaret Millar. I promised to do a 2,500-word article on her, but it's proven quite difficult, for some reason or another. (One of the reasons is that I'm writing in another language other than Finnish.) It started getting better when I decided I'll have to reread some of Millar's books. And it seems I read Beast in View (1955) for the first time in my life, since I didn't remember anything about it! And I'm sure glad I did, since it's an excellent psychological thriller, with lots of noirish overtones and a very convincing twist in the end. It didn't win the Edgar for nothing. The only bad thing about the book is the way Millar depicts homosexuals, as weak perverts with cold hands. But hey, it's 1955!

I also read The Listening Walls from 1959, and while not equally good as Beast in View, still a very worthwhile book about two young women in Mexico and the other one getting killed in what seems like a suicide. There's also a private eye called Elmer Dodd, short and somewhat overweight. Beast in View stars a similar character, a family friend and solicitor, who's asked to care of some awkward things, but he ends up acting like a private eye, even solving the case - this shows that Millar was interested in private eyes, but just didn't want to use one hero regularly. (Or then it was her husband's idea: "Why don't you use one of these private eyes, they can be quite handy?")

I started thinking about Mexico in Millar's work. It shows quite often, many times almost as the unconscious of the depressed and lonely Americans she writes about. It's a place where everyone wants to go, to forget, to start anew - it's also a place wherein you can set lies easily, as happens in Beast in View (which otherwise takes place only in Los Angeles). Mexico is important in Ask For Me Tomorrow, one of Millar's later Tom Aragon novels. Private eye Steve Piñata in Stranger In My Grave is half-Mexican. And then there's of course The Listening Walls. I'm not sure, but I've got a feeling Mexico plays an important part also in The Air That Kills - I've read that years ago (twice, I think), but I'm not sure anymore and I can't find my copy of the book. Anyone can confirm my suspicion?

Seppo Huunonen's exploitation flick from the seventies

Finland has nearly never produced a good share of trashy exploitation flicks. Teuvo Tulio's noir films from the fourties and fifties had some of that quality, as did some of Veikko Itkonen's films, but the only real entrepreneur in that category has been Visa Mäkinen whose indie-produced films have been very poor indeed, almost up to the so-bad-it's-good point.

There's a serious contender, however, lurking in the early seventies. Seppo Huunonen's Karvat (Hair - don't get this mixed up with, well, Hair) from 1974 is just that: trashy exploitation flick. I think it purports to be something else, since there's a good dose of parody, irony and metafictional narrative in the film. There are many things in the film that make it a forgotten classic (it was released in video in the early eighties, but otherwise it has disappeared completely, it has never been shown on television, for example): Paroni Paakkunainen's great funky music (which I'll steal when I make my feature film debut), some very bloody violence (this was X-rated, which is very rare for a Finnish film), lots of sex and nudity plus all-encompassing sleaziness. The most exciting fact is that this was based on Lionel White's Obsession (1962), American paperback original classic that was earlier filmed as Pierrot le fou by Jean-Luc Godard! I don't know whether Seppo Huunonen knew about Godard's film, but it's still amazing. And this must be the only film made in Finland that's based on an American crime novel. (White's first name is written as "Lionell" in the credits.)

The film is a mixed bag. As I said, there are some self-parodic moments, and several leave with a strong WTF sensation, especially the scene in which a couple making love is photographed with animated handkerchiefs! There's also a weird allusion to an European Disney character, Super-Goofy (Superhessu) and one friggin' weird resurrection. This makes the film pretty awkward to watch at times, but it also makes it wild and unpredictable. What also makes the film pretty awkward is that the actors are all pretty bad, without charisma or even good looks. You'd think that with this kind of noir story the femme fatale should be a knock-out, but not in this one, no sir! The film isn't a total turkey, though, as this review says it is.

The film is coming - on my suggestion, even though I watched it only now - to the festival of Finnish film in Turku in the beginning of April, but I'll be posting details later. Strongly recommended, if you're anywhere near Turku. Determined to be a cult classic!

Ah, by the way: there's a scene in the film in which the protagonist reads Shakespeare's condensed plays. There's another book on the sofa. It's upside down, but the cover up. I recognized it immediately, but had to go to the shelf to verify: it was the Finnish translation of Margaret Millar's noir classic A Stranger in My Grave/Muukalainen haudassani.

Sorry, no pictures!