Kenneth Millar, hiding under the pseudonym of Ross MacDonald, is arguably the third member of the so-called Holy Trinity cool detective, along with Deshel Hammett and Raymond Chandler. And for many, he is the most critically and academically respected writer of the three.
short biography
Kenneth was born on December 13, 1915 in Los Gatos, California, but grew up and was educated in Canada, where he was under the supervision of a constantly ill mother and a series of relatives, after her divorce from her father Millar, a sailor, poet and writer. According to Kenneth, he calculated the number of rooms in which he lived during his first sixteen years. There were fifty in total. The lack of roots and the void left by the absent parent became a recurring motif in Millard's fiction.
Kenneth attended boarding schools, and in 1938 interrupted his studies at the University of Western Ontario to travel around Europe for a year. Then there was a visit to Nazi Germany. He returned to Canada, married Margaret Sturm, and completed his education at the University of Michigan. Millar began teaching and, inspired by the literary success of his wife (Kenneth and Margaret - famous American writers), began to write. In 1939, their daughter Linda was born.
Creative family
During World War II, perhaps unconsciously following in the footsteps of his sailor father, Millar served as a liaison officer aboard an escort aircraft carrier of the US Navy in the Pacific. In 1946, when the ship was in California, Margaret visited her husband, and the couple decided to stay there. For the rest of their lives, the couple lived in Santa Barbara.
They lived well, or at least it seemed so. Millar (under the pseudonym John, then John-Ross, and finally Ross MacDonald) and Margaret were regularly published. Kenneth began a series of works featuring private detective Lew Archer. The first book with his participation was the 1949 Detective Live Target.
Personal and creative turning point
Then everything went not so smoothly. His own family life was not ideal - difficulties in marriage began, and Linda was a problem child. Psychotherapy helped, and the 1959 novel, The Galton Case, was a watershed, both personally and creatively. Detective Archer's (and Millar's) obsession with the intricate, secret stories of families and how the sins of the past form the present was finally tamed - everyone who wanted to see it saw it. Although the early works featuring Archer were well written and action-packed, The Galton Case was the beginning of this work.
From that moment, Ross MacDonald beat the same story again and again: endless variations on the same topics of lost and abandoned children, absent parents and family secrets. In the hands of a less experienced writer, this would probably have grown into hack. But not in the case of Millard.
Ross MacDonald: a statement of success
In 1969, a favorable review on the front page of The New York Times (by William Goldman) of Millar’s last novel from the Archer series “Farewell Look”, followed by an interview with John Leonard, finally attracted the attention of critics, whom the writer always not enough. Of course, the respect that his person gained today was obtained through this article. But the popularity enjoyed by Ross MacDonald (the writer's books on sales were not inferior to the works of Stephen King) should have been based on something more than a few references in the newspaper.
Although the articles seemed to confirm MacDonald's status, they did not make him the "holy spirit" of the detective along with the "father" Hammett and Chandler, the "son." Critics began to use the phrase "in the tradition of Hammett, Chandler and MacDonald" in the early 60s. The fact that Knopf was the publisher of all three also provides food for thought, like the fact that Hammett's first novel appeared in 1929, Chandler in 1939 and MacDonald in 1949. It was like a natural development of a detective novel.
Recognition by critics
Although MacDonald was not perceived equal to Hammett and Chandler until the 50s, he was certainly the most critically acclaimed author of this decade. The critical and commercial success of the movie Harper, based on the writer’s first novel Living Target, in 1966 only strengthened his popularity. All this preceded articles in the Newsweek and the New York Times book review, which really culminated in the lengthy process of gaining critical acclaim.
Were all his fans sincere? For many people, books with Lew Archer are the literary standard of their life. It was worth reading one, and I wanted to read all the others. And this at a time when there was still nothing known about meritorious reviews, except for a few advertisements on the covers.
Ross MacDonald: Bibliography
- The Dark Tunnel - 1944.
- "Living Target" - 1949.
- "Sucking pool" - 1950.
- "How Some Die" - 1951.
- "The Dead Grin" - 1952.
- "Find the victim" - 1954.
- "Barbarian Coast" - 1956.
- "Messengers of Fate" - 1958.
- The Galton Case - 1959.
- Wicherly - 1961.
- The Striped Coffin - 1962.
- "Chills" - 1964.
- The Reverse Side of the Dollar - 1965.
- "Dirty Money" - 1966.
- "Enemy of the Enemy" - 1968.
- Farewell Look - 1969.
- "Buried" - 1971.
- "Sleeping Beauty" - 1973.
- The Blue Hammer - 1976.
Cool detective innovator
Of course, some of MacDonald’s ads, in particular his own, are hard to digest. And not all of his works are equally strong. Again, he wrote many books - more than Hammett and Chandler put together. And Ross could have gotten a crime romance to where he had never really been before, and thus sold a lot of books. Archer was perhaps the first of the private detectives who really left a mark and laid the foundation for a new psychological depth of the cool detective.
Millar's other interests included nature conservation and politics. Ross MacDonald explored the fascinating and ever-changing society of his native state, although his main passion was the intricate and hidden secrets of the human heart, hidden truths that equally haunt the victim and the killer. And in the end, he left a significant mark in his genre, whether someone wants it or not.
Traces of Archer's compassion (or bleeding weakness, depending on the point of view) can be traced in the works of Robert Parker, Michael Collins, Bill Pronzini, Sue Grafton, Joseph Hansen, Jonathan Walen and Stephen Greenleaf and many other writers. Someone must have actually read books, not just a few newspaper passages of the author.
Colleagues recognition
In 1965, the writer was president of the American Detective Society, in 1964 received the Silver Dagger and the Golden Dagger of the British Association of Detective Writers in 1965, and in 1981 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Writers Society detective genre.
Ken Millar died on July 11, 1983, preserving a legacy that forever left its mark in a detective novel. The Archer series requires the reader not only to solve the secrets of our own lives, but, more importantly, try to understand them.
If Daniel Hammett breathed primitive power into a cool detective, and Raymond Chandler became the founder of his prevailing tone, then Ken Millar, aka Ross MacDonald, gave the genre the respect that he enjoys now, providing a worldwide readership and making it easier for his followers.