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Millar, Margaret

Page history last edited by J F Norris 11 years, 10 months ago

Margaret MillarMargaret Millar (1915–1994) was born in Ontario, Canada. She attended the Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate Institute and the University of Toronto (1933-1936), majoring in classics. In 1938 she married Kenneth Millar. She published The Invisible Worm in 1941, written in only fourteen days while recuperating from an illness, which introduced the psychiatrist detective Dr Paul Prye. He is described as a man "dressed in immaculate white flannels topped with a navy-blue blazer, who looked like a man of the world, and the rather quizzical smile in his blue eyes suggested that he was also a man amused at the world." Prye's police contact, Inspector Sands of the Toronto Police Department, is a lonely, compassionate man of drab appearance. From 1950 most of the Millar mysteries were set in California. Her home town, Santa Barbara, often appeared in her books variously named Santa Felicia and San Felice. In 1955 Millar won an Edgar for A Beast in View.

 

Life is something that happens to you while you're making other plans. -- Margaret Millar

 

Millar was active in the conservation movement in California. In 1965 she was named a Woman of the Year by Los Angeles Times. Her observations on the wildlife in the canyons near her home were collected in The Birds and the Beasts Were There (1968). Millar did in Santa Barbara of a heart attack on 26 March 1994.

 

Her series characters were Paul Prye and Inspector Sands.

 

See also http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/from-view-to-kill-discussion-on.html

 

Bibliography

The Invisible Worm (1941)

The Weak Eyed Bat (1942)

The Devil Loves Me (1942)

Fire Will Freeze (1944)

The Iron Gates (1945) {aka Taste of Fears}

Do Evil in Return (1950)

Rose's Last Summer (1952)

Vanish in an Instant (1952)

A Beast in View (1955)

An Air That Kills (1957) {aka The Soft Talkers}

The Listening Walls (1959)

A Stranger in My Grave (1960)

How Like an Angel (1962)

The Fiend (1964)

Beyond This Point Are Monsters (1970)

Ask for Me Tomorrow (1976)

The Murder of Miranda (1979)

Mermaid (1982)

Banshee (1983)

Spider Webs (1986)

 

Comments (2)

Jim Benton said

at 12:41 pm on Jun 5, 2014

There is a third series character, the lawyer -- supposedly, though he never does anything law-connected and his supposed firm is somewhat unrealistic -- Tom Aragon, who is featured, if that is the word, in the three novels beginning with the embarrassing ASK FOR ME TOMORROW. (I should state that I am a fan of most of Millar's work, especially the underrated DO EVIL IN RETURN. But the three Aragon books are simply bad, and ASK FOR ME TOMORROW is also marred by a constant and vicious hatred -- of Mexicans. Not one reference to a Mexican scene or a Mexican character is even slightly positive, every single one is filled with all the negative stereotypes you'd expect from a much lesser writer. (Was there a personal factor in this, it seems as if she went through a major change in attitude starting, [possibly, with BEYOND HIS PLACE...)

Jim Benton said

at 2:08 am on Jun 8, 2014

Also, a factual correction. Inspector Sands appears in the third Paul Prye book, THE DEVIL LOVES ME, but when he is introduced, it is stated that he has never met Prye previously -- and, in fact, Prye claims never to have spent time in Toronto, Sands' home base.

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