Upcoming classic thrillers, Library of America.

On January 3, the Library of America announced some of its fall 2023 releases, which included the following:

(1) Five Classic Thrillers 1961–1964 (The Murderers by Fredric Brown, The Name of the Game Is Death by Dan J. Marlowe, Dead Calm by Charles Williams, The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes, The Score by Richard Stark [Donald Westlake])

(2) Four Classic Thrillers 1964–1969 (The Fiend by Margaret Millar, Doll by Ed McBain [Evan Hunter], Run Man Run by Chester Himes, The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith)

Below are some critics' reactions to the works in these volumes.

Re Brown's The Murderers: Sgt. Cuff [John Winterich] in 30 Sept. 1961 Saturday Review dubbed it "highly amative."

Re Highsmith's Tremor of Forgery: Terrence Rafferty in the 4 Jan. 1988 New Yorker dubbed the book "nihilistic."

Re Himes's Run Man Run: Sgt. Cuff in the 31 Dec. 1966 Saturday Review regarded this as a "[t]aut, devilish, ably-written slice of life—and death."

Re Hughes's Expendable Man (Edgar nominee, Best Novel): Kirkus lauded its "savage momentum."

Re Marlowe's The Name of the Game Is Death: Anthony Boucher in the 11 Feb 1962 New York Times believed that Marlowe had reached "an impressive new high."

"Women & crime fiction" resource, UF Tampa Libraries

Margaret Lewis's biography of Edith Pargeter/Ellis Peters

To accompany the U-Florida course Lit 4386, the Special Collections of the UF–Tampa Libraries has assembled a "Women & Crime Fiction" online exhibition featuring mystery highlights of its collection that focus on female authors, female detectives, femme fatales, and female victims. Some of the works featured are by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Vera Caspary, Lillian de la Torre, Anna Katharine Green, Margaret Millar, Ellis Peters, and the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Unusual items include The Vulcan Academy Murders by Jean Lorrah, which offers Captain Kirk as detective, and an April 1960 letter from Columbia University student Leigh Marlowe to mystery author Baynard Kendrick related to her study of villains.

Reading group on Caspary, Highsmith, Hughes, Millar.

Edgar nominee Frankie Y. Bailey (University at Albany, SUNY) will be facilitating a Zoom reading group from late September to December for the Center for Fiction on "Women Crime Fiction Writers of the 1940s and '50s."  Books covered will be Laura by Vera Caspary, Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith, In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes, and Beast in View by Margaret Millar.

For GivingTuesday: Consider mystery collections.

Phoebe Atwood
Taylor. From
Barnard College's
Mortarboard, 1930

Today's Giving Tuesday focuses attention on charitable contributions, as people consider the organizations or causes to support or to make a contribution in someone's name during the holiday season.

Libraries and archives need support to acquire, preserve, catalog, and digitize their collections as well as to present exhibitions or other programs involving their holdings. Consider contributing to your alma mater's library or one of the following collections with significant mystery elements:

• Ray and Pat Browne Popular Culture Library, Bowling Green State University

• Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico (home of the papers of Tony Hillerman)

• Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University (home of manuscripts of many authors such as Harry Kemelman, Jane Langton, Elizabeth Linington, Phoebe Atwood Taylor, Hillary Waugh, and Donald Westlake)

• Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington (home of the papers of author-critic Anthony Boucher and Mystery Writers of America)

• Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (home of Erle Stanley Gardner's "plot wheel")

• Rose Library, Emory University (home of one of the largest collections of Victorian yellowbacks)

• Special Collections, University of California Irvine (home of the papers of Kenneth Millar, aka Ross Macdonald, and Margaret Millar)

• Special Collections, University of South Carolina (home of the papers of James Ellroy, George V. Higgins, and John Jakes. An ongoing and major project of the USC libraries is the preservation and digitization of 2000 Fox Movietone newsreels.)

• Wisconsin Center for Film and Television Research (home of the papers of Vera Caspary, Kirk Douglas, and Dalton Trumbo. The center has recently established a portal at the Internet Archive that includes a home movie of theater legends Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.)

The Library of Congress offers several options for supporting its work (don't forget that it houses the papers of luminaries such as James M. Cain), including the National Book Festival.

Margaret Millar's "Rose's Last Summer" (1960).

In "Rose's Last Summer" (October 1960 episode of Thriller, directed by Arthur Hiller and based on the book by Edgar winner and Grand Master Margaret Millar), Mary Astor plays an alcoholic former actress who is found dead under mysterious circumstances. A suspicious friend (Lin McCarthy) teams up with her ex-husband (Jack Livesey) to investigate.

Margaret Millar this week on Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Encore.

Joan Hackett in "Beast in View"
Alfred Hitchcock Hour

Margaret Millar's Edgar-winning Beast in View (1955) is featured this week on the Alfred Hitchcock Hour on Encore. Joan Hackett and Kevin McCarthy star. (YouTube clip here)

U-Chicago's Popular Literature Collection.

Univ of Chicago Library's Special Collections finished an inventory last year of its Popular Literature Collection, which includes about 2000 paperbacks and science fiction magazines, some with lurid

Portrait of Anthony Berkeley Cox
by George Morrow
from Jugged Journalism (1925)

covers. Now, finally, the finding aid is online. Books in the collection include Trial and Error (1945 ed.; film 1941) by Anthony Berkeley [Cox], Death in the Blackout (1946) by Anthony Gilbert, Of Tender Sin (1952) by David Goodis, The Rope Began to Hang the Butcher (1944) by C. W. Grafton (father of Sue), Bimini Run (1952) by E. Howard Hunt (yes, the Watergate figure), Dread Journey (1947) by Dorothy B. Hughes, Wall of Eyes (1943) by Margaret Millar, and She Faded into Air (1941) by Ethel Lina White (best known for The Lady Vanishes). Some covers from the collection are posted here.

Orion reissues Margaret Millar's Beast in View.

Happy to see that Orion has just reissued MWA Grand Master Margaret Millar's Edgar-winning Beast in View (1955), as she often has been overshadowed by her famous writer husband, Ross Macdonald. Summed up Anthony Boucher in the Dec. 4, 1955, New York Times re Beast in View: "Devilishly devious trick-plotting given substance by acute and terrifying psychological insight." Stark House Press has republished Millar's An Air that Kills/Do Evil in Return.

Happy birthday, Father Andrew M. Greeley and Margaret Millar.

Father Andrew M. Greeley, creator of clerical sleuth Blackie Ryan as well as the author of nonfiction and science fiction books, turns 80 today. His latest featuring Ryan is The Bishop at the Lake.

And author Margaret Millar, the wife of Lew Archer creator Ross Macdonald, was born today in 1915. She died in 1994. Millar won an Edgar for Beast in View in 1956; other notable works include How Like an Angel and Beyond This Point Are Monsters.

The Early Years of Random House.

I've been reading Dear Donald, Dear Bennett, which are the letters between Random House partners Donald Klopfer and Bennett Cerf, when Klopfer was serving in the US Army Air Corps during World War II. It's a fascinating discussion of publishing that includes literary parties, such as one given by John Gunther, which became so, well, animated that a rhumbaing couple fell down the stairs.

I've been most interested in the mystery-related mentions. There's Cerf talking about an "electrified" sales staff over "the new Mignon Eberhart book" (probably Wolf in Man's Clothing, 1942, given the date of the letter). There's glee over acquiring "Frances Crane, whose detective novels sell about as well as Dorothy Disney's, away from Lippincott" (121). There's satisfaction over Margaret Millar: "Margaret Millar's The Iron Gates [1945] is tops in its line and I think we'll be able to run that up to between 15,000 and 20,000 too" (205). There's a swipe or two at Kenneth Fearing, best known for his later The Big Clock (Harcourt, 1946; filmed 1948; remade as No Way Out, 1987). To wit: "Kenneth Fearing has turned in some stinker that he dug out of the trunk in an obvious effort to end his contract with us. We are going to let him get away with it" (34-35).

And this from Cerf, to be filed under the category Famous Last Words:

The beautiful part about it all is that the setup can remain a simple one, right under our own control, and with no possibility, in my opinion, of ever developing into a sprawling and unmanageable menagerie like the Doubleday outfit. You know that I share your abhorrence for impersonal "big business." I don't think Random House will ever get into that category. (148)

Spring 07 Clues published.

The spring 2007 Clues: A Journal of Detection has been published and is a special theme issue devoted to Margaret Millar (Edgar winner, Beast in View; author, How Like an Angel, Beyond This Point Are Monsters, etc.; wife of Ross Macdonald). The issue is guest edited by Dean James.

The issue includes the following articles:

• The Literary Lives of Margaret Millar and Ross Macdonald - Tom Nolan

• Where the Monsters Are: Margaret Millar and the "Mexican Problem" - Ana Patricia Rodriguez

• From Detective Fiction to Detective Literature: Psychology in the Novels of Dorothy L. Sayers and Margaret Millar - Kelly C. Connelly

• Review Essay: Margaret Millar in Print - Dean James

• The Last Word: Margaret Millar's Final Novels - Robert Barnard

• The "Same Old Same Old": Gender and Race in Margaret Maron's Deborah Knott Series - Caren J. Town

• Book Review: Laurence Roth's Inspecting Jews: American Jewish Detective Stories (rev. Shelley Godsland)