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.

A bit more on Ross Macdonald's book

As Bill Crider mentioned in his comment, the Ross Macdonald novel I was reading was originally, in the US, titled Meet Me at the Morgue. I think Experience with Evil, the UK title, might be more Ross Macdonald-esque. There's something stock noir about "Meet Me at the Morgue".

Here's the cover. I didn't have to scan the book, since Todd Mason found one in the net. It is indeed one of the best British paperback covers I've seen from this era, up there with the best of the American artists. The artist is Sam Peffer (his signature says "Peff", which is slightly funny if you're Finnish) and there's a website devoted to him here.

And as for the book which I thought I was reading for the first time: Bill's revelation about the US title made me check, and yes, I've read the Finnish translation that came out in 1997, under the title Tavataan ruumishuoneella (which is the almost literal translation of the original US title). I just didn't remember a darn thing about it. Well, if I remember right, I read the book slightly after I'd broken up with the mother of my daughter, so it's been somewhat difficult time... (And it's been almost nine years since.)

Now, back to the book. I've still got some 30 pages to go!

(Oh, here's a review for another non-Archer book by Macdonald, in Finnish. Check it out!)

Friday's Forgotten Book: Experience with Evil

I'm in the middle of John Ross Macdonald's Howard Cross novel Experience with Evil, from, I think, 1954 (I don't have the book with me as I write) and enjoying it, well, maybe not as much as a bonafide Lew Archer novel, but almost as much. It's interesting to see how Macdonald uses his usual tropes of fatherlessness and cold mothers and the generational evil even when Lew Archer is not around. Not to be missed by any Ross Macdonald fan. I'm not sure if the book is in print; I'm reading an old Pan edition. With a great cover, but you'll have to wait for that one.

Ross Macdonald covers

Here's a fascinating article on new Ross Macdonald covers by the designer himself.

Thanks for Duane Swierczynski's tweet!