El Maligno

by Margaret Millar

Charlie Gowen es un joven ingenuo que, como consecuencia de un suceso ocurrido años atrás,vive encerrado en su mundo;un mundo aparte al que nadie puede acceder. La desaparición de una niña crea una situación limite a unas familias, originándose una sorprendente tensión entre las personas que viven alrededor de la niña.

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Fiction, Thriller, Suspense, Mystery Thriller, American

283 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Margaret Ellis Millar (née Sturm) was an American-Canadian mystery and suspense writer. Born in Kitchener, Ontario, she was educated there and in Toronto. She moved to the United States after marrying Kenneth Millar (better known under the pen name Ross Macdonald). They resided for decades in the city of Santa Barbara, which was often utilized as a locale in her later novels under the pseudonyms of San Felice or Santa Felicia.

Millar's books are distinguished by sophistication of characterization. Often we are shown the rather complex interior lives of the people in her books, with issues of class, insecurity, failed ambitions, loneliness or existential isolation or paranoia often being explored with an almost literary quality that transcends the mystery genre. Unusual people, mild societal misfits or people who don't quite fit into their surroundings are given much interior detail. In some of the books we are given chilling and fascinating insight into what it feels like to be losing touch with reality and evolving into madness. In general, she is a writer of both expressive description and yet admirable economy, often ambitious in the sociological underpinnings of the stories and the quality of the writing.

Millar often delivers effective and ingenious "surprise endings," but the details that would allow the solution of the surprise have usually been subtly included, in the best genre tradition. One of the distinctions of her books, however, is that they would be interesting, even if you knew how they were going to end, because they are every bit as much about subtleties of human interaction and rich psychological detail of individual characters as they are about the plot.

Millar was a pioneer in writing intelligently about the psychology of women. Even as early as the '40s and '50s, her books have a very mature and matter-of-fact view of class distinctions, sexual freedom and frustration, and the ambivalence of moral codes depending on a character's economic circumstances. Her earliest novels seem unusually frank. Read against the backdrop of Production Code-era movies of the time, they remind us that life as lived in the '40s and '50s was not as black-and-white morally as Hollywood would have us believe.

While she was not known for any one recurring detective (unlike her husband, whose constant gumshoe was Lew Archer), she occasionally used a detective character for more than one novel. Among her occasional ongoing sleuths were Canadians Dr. Paul Prye (her first invention, in the earliest books) and Inspector Sands (a quiet, unassuming Canadian police inspector who might be the most endearing of her recurring inventions). In the California years, a few books featured either Joe Quinn, a rather down-on-his-luck private eye, or Tom Aragorn, a young, Hispanic lawyer.
Sadly, most of Millar's books are out of print in America, with the exception of the short story collection The Couple Next Door and two novels, An Air That Kills and Do Evil In Return, that have been re-issued as classics by Stark House Press in California.

In 1956 Millar won the Edgar Allan Poe Awards, Best Novel award for Beast in View. In 1965 she was awarded the Woman of the Year Award by the Los Angeles Times. In 1983 she was awarded the Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America in recognition of her lifetime achievements.

Reviews

[Deb Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

A young man who presents to the world as a good-looking, hard-working and responsible adult is also a diagnosed sexual psychopath.

Charlie Gowen was court ordered and remanded to the state mental hospital due to his inappropriate actions towards a child in the past. Charlie was discharged to the care of his older brother, Ben, found a good job and has had a girlfriend for the last year -- but Charlie's thoughts are still upsetting at times although he does his best to make both his brother and his employer happy. Still, old thought patterns are beginning to resurface...

Margaret Millar is an excellent storyteller. The plot flows easily, even though the subject matter is not of the easiest about which to write. The psychological insights Millar provides for all the main characters are intriguing and enlightening.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you follow my reviews, you might remember that I discovered Margaret Millar through the recommendation of comedian John Mulaney. You might also recall that I started with her 1955, Edgar award winning Beast In View, which I found on the underwhelming side (and how DARE it win the Edgar over the timeless The Talented Mr. Ripley?!?).

Well, I'm pleased to say The Fiend, published in 1964 and now out of print, is a superior creation, and my faith in Margaret Millar and John Mulaney has been restored. The book business is another story, though. Why is this one out of print but the fairly silly Beast in View has centre stage and a fun cover?

This story, featuring two young girls and a lurking registered sex offender, is low on the pulp meter, doesn't fall for obvious tropes, and is well written (particularly the dialogue is a pleasure to read). This book is anything but predictable - even the title isn't what you think it is.

Turns out, comedians can be a good source for book recs!

Millar's Wall of Eyes is up next...

[Shane Plassenthal · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best novels I've read in a long time. It's now a personal favorite. A dark and well written tale brimming with wit and wisdom about the dynamic of the suburban American family and the way conventional society views sex offenders, children and marriage. Also, delightfully twisted and suspenseful with an ending you won't see coming.
Reminds me of how Ruth Rendell's psychological novels are.
Highly recommended.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been focusing on the books of Margaret Millar this month as I had four unread ones on my bookshelf. I've enjoyed each book I've read, Millar is a wonderful mystery writer and story-teller. The Fiend, published in 1964, is another excellent example of her writing skill. (NB. The title is at the same time somewhat misleading and also perfect)

Jessie is a 9-year old girl living in San Modesto CA. We see her playing in the park with her best friend Mary Martha. Charles Gowen sits in his car watching them. Jessie burns her hands playing on the monkey bars and the playground monitor sends them home. What do we learn about them and others in the next pages? Charles Gowen lives with his brother Ben and was once in trouble for something involving young girl(s). Mary Martha lives with her mother, who is separated from her husband, Sheridan, and fears that he is stalking them. She sees Charles's green car and fears that it is Sheridan. Jessie lives down the road with her parents, the Brants. They seem a normal family. Their neighbours, the Harringtons, are childless and Victoria spends an inordinate time and money on Jessie, to the chagrin of Jessie's mom and of Victoria's dad.

Charles thinks Jessie lives in Mary Martha's house and he sends an anonymous letter to Mary's mom Kate Oakley, advising her to take better care of her daughter, that the girl is reckless and might get hurt. This starts a chain of events and actions that make for a fascinating story. We get to delve into the lives of this group of people and learn their problems and weaknesses. When the unthinkable happens (I'll let you find out for yourself), their lives will be placed under a microscopic examination and I think you'll be surprised at the results.

As always, strong story-telling, great, fascinating, fully developed characters. It wasn't perfect and maybe not as complete as others of her stories, but still an entertaining, tense story. (4 stars)

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an outstanding psychological thriller that keeps you guessing right up until the very end. I couldn’t put it down. I was so caught up in this.

[Ebirdy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great "character" or "psychological" novel, which I really enjoyed. I'd never heard of Margaret Millar before - to be honest I'm not even sure how I got this book. I think I received it in the book swap from my book group, but I'm not sure. I would like to read some of her others books (The Beast
Don't be put off by the subject matter of child molestation. It's the background of one of the characters, but it's not exactly the subject of the book.

Millar does an terrific job of drawing her characters but still leaves some mystery to the story, so it's actually quite suspenseful. Nothing in the book is exactly as it appears! And her dialogue is quite funny at times.

I'm really glad I read this story and I hope her other works are just as good.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this book. The language and attitudes clearly identify that the story takes place 50+ years ago, but Millar’s insights are so sharp and poignant, and the dialogue draws them so well, that the writing is that much more impressive. The subject matter is particularly edgy and ambitious for that time.

I found the story compelling, with a strong undercurrent of feeling that there was much more going on than met the eye - and there was already plenty going on that met the eye. I was fairly shocked by some of the events toward the end of the book. The affair between Dave and Virginia - did not see that coming. Dave and Ellen seemed to be a solid couple, Howard and Virginia’s relationship seemed irreparable, and it was another surprise to me that their fates seem to reverse in the final pages. I also remain unsure as to what Charlie did, or did not do, in his past. The depiction of Kate as a narcissistic, illogical, delusional individual was so realistic as to be infuriating, and Mac as her aspiring voice of reason was a great vehicle for illustrating her.

I think Margaret Millar is an underrated author, and this novel not nearly well known enough. Fantastic book.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

The /alt tag by the fifth star reads, "It was amazing."
Well, it was. I made my skin crawl, my heart bleed and my head spin.
Margaret Millar is a genius story-teller and this is the proof.

[PF O'Friar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of mice and men: Suburbia Edition!

I have the audible version.

Charlie had a bad rap and he was slow, something bad he did, would it haunt and his brother forever?
Plus: 3 families involved in a web of lost expectations and jealousy.
How sometimes suburban life is heavier than wars.
How a series of misunderstandings could ruin everyone's lives.

I loved how the author managed to think like the young girls think, mixing up half truthes that parents tell them.

I recommend

[Tyler Monsein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't even know what genre this is. It's just a net of tangled plots and characters. I still don't understand how Millar gave all of these wonderful characters room to breathe and express themselves naturally, effortlessly, while constricting the plot tighter and tighter around them. A must read for anyone interested in structure and character.

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

A suburban underbelly novel that slyly uses the reader's own expectations of danger and safety against them. We start this novel with two nine-year-old girls being watched on the playground by a registered sex offender, then we watch the girls go to where we hope they will be safe in their own homes. But, of course, nothing in the book is as simple as these early pages seem. Are these girls in danger? And if so, where is that danger coming from?

As we expand to see the lives and families of the girls Jessie and Mary Martha, as well as Charles the man who was watching them, we see the many ways adults prey on children. I say that and yet basically nothing in this book would count as abuse. There is no physical harm, but there is all kinds of manipulation. The girls represent something to the adults around them that is more than who they actually are, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

Some of the characters can come off rather flat (particularly saintly librarian Louise) but it's easy to forgive because Millar is doing so many interesting things here.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have long been a fan of Ross Macdonald's. If this book is any indication, I am definitely becoming a fan of his wife's. Obviously, dysfunctional families and crime were the two's specialties, but Millar seems to take the reader more inside the heads of her characters than Macdonald did. In this book, she still left plenty up to the imagination, a trait I like, by mentioning, sort of in passing without delving much into them, key points that might have affected the characters. Some authors do that in a frustrating way, leaving out too much, but she really knew what she was doing. This was a real page-turner, while being very well-written, and was I ever surprised by the ending!

[Zak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great all-round storytelling. Character-building, atmosphere and build-up were spot on. [4.5*]

[Anthony McGill · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a kid, I read mystery books all the time, but hadn't in probably 15 years. This one is good at pulling you in and making you guess at what might happen, and gee whiz, I just might get back into mystery novels.

Lots of clever and funny lines, and distinctive dialogue/internal monologue. At the very least, I will read more from Margaret Millar.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that leads you along to think it's one kind of thing and then turns out to be another entirely, The Fiend has two married couples (unhappy), one divorced woman (unhappy), two brothers linked by more than blood (unhappy), two children (unhappy), and a male family lawyer (unhappy), all of whom orbit each other, contributing to each other's unhappiness, but who is the titular fiend? Is it Charlie, who may or may not be a pedophile? Or is it someone else? A complicated psychological thriller filled with the melodrama common to novels of the time.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

First published in 1964, the mannerisms and attitudes seem more akin the the late 1950s. I liked reading the book, however. Ms. Millar writes in an appealing yet accessible literary way, and she explores the inner secrets (some dark and unsavory, yes) in the families well. None of the sexual or violent content rises above a PG-13 rating. Her metaphors are often so dead-on and aptly used.

[Darwin8u · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to put this book away for a bit. Emotionally it wrecks the reader. I can see how shocking this would have been at the time. It reminds me of the psychological horror later developed by Matt Bell and Brian Evenson (Open Curtain). Not a book I’d likely read again.

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

2026 Book #11:
The Fiend (1964) by Margaret Millar

I may be a fanatical reader of SF, horror, and weird fiction, but I know next to nothing about crime/thriller literature. So I decided to step outside my comfort zone and tackle a Library of America volume of 1960s crime novels. Millar’s The Fiend was the first book in the volume, and it was a pretty good one. I was expecting some kind of whodunit murder-mystery with archetypal hardboiled characters, but Millar gives us none of that. In fact, the novel misleads the reader into thinking that they’ve got the whole plot figured out, that they know who’s the villain and what he’s planning. But the novel turns into a nuanced character study of several unsound minds, and the revelations – some of which happen within the final page of the novel – are truly unexpected (at least for me, the unseasoned reader). Honestly, this probably owes more to something like Fritz Lang’s M (1931) than it does to the stereotypical crime story, in that its interest lies primarily in the perversities of human psychology and the social conditions that produce that psychology rather than in blow-by-blow mystery-solving. Millar’s characters are complex and morally ambiguous, and she uses these realistic characters and their family dynamics to explore the tensions of suburban life in the 1960s, peeling back the glossy layer of contentment to reveal a world of dishonesty, grievance, and obsession. It’s this incisive look at suburbia that is, I think, the heart of the novel. (4/5)

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A simplistic look at complicated human psychological problems with mostly simplistic viewpoints as the explanation. Human life is suffering and there is no easy solution. I blame the time period that this was written not the author.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such intense, vivid characters and excellent writing is so unusual in a mystery that I was taken aback. The little girls, the cheaters, the pedophile, his brother and the librarian. That is what the title would be if it were a french movie. The little girls and the pedophile: guileless but sinister. The adults: troubled. The librarian and the brother: devoted and deluded. The pedophile calls his crush a fiend, meaning friend, which is a funny reversal. While Charlie is supposed to be the predator of children, in a sense the real predators are the children, but then the children are also innocent victims, which is also true of Charlie.
What makes this novel so exceptional is that the characters are all loathsome yet likable or pitiable, humor shows up in the oddest places, the tension is tight and the plotting unpredictable. While the end seemed a little far-fetched to me, I was astounded overall.

[Sean Brennan]

The very title of the book is a GREAT red herring, but I won't dwell on the reasons for this statement to enjoys people's pleasure at some future date. This is a crafted psychological thriller dealing with the devastation that Divorce plays on all parties especially the children. It is my opinion that the majority of the supposedly 'adult' characters in the book needed intensive psychiatric care both before, during and after the events contained in this compelling thriller.

[Carla]

A second reading for this page-turner from this great mystery writer. Finely-tuned social satire, with extraordinarily vivid characters, and a plot that takes you to the last sentence. Millar is such a fine writer, and glad the Library of America included this one in its Crime Novels of the 1960s. .

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

And Millar strikes again! Seriously, you cannot get better for psychological suspense than Millar. OK. I'm going to just come out and say it: I have come to prefer Millar to Highsmith or Thompson. Yes! She is THAT good!

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is the posted blurb intending to entice people into reading this classic crime novel from the 1960s:

"The young girl... the prison... the doctors... they were all part of the past. Charlie was free and getting well now -

So no one had to know how much time Charlie spent around the school yard, watching. No one did - until the night 9-year-old Jessie Brant disappeared..."

To be honest, this caused me to pause for a time...Did I really want to read what seemed to be a crime novel about a child molester?

But the puzzle was this: It was one of four novels from the 1960s packaged by the Library of America as among the greatest written in that decade, one of two book from LOA covering crime novels of the 1960s. My wife had already read the entire volume and loved it. So...

So I read it, and discovered a rather sad, suburban world of the '60s where it seemed that no one was really happy with their current state of affairs. No one, it seems, except for Charlie, to whom I had already been "introduced" because of the lead-in blurb.

Ms. Millar is clearly one of the most skilled writers I've yet come across; her ability to describe distinct and quite different characters, as well as to "paint" the domestic and work scenes of her characters, is frankly unsurpassed.

But what ultimately disappointed me was this: While several murky questions were raised in the novel -- Were some neighbors engaging in an affair? Was Charlie's big brother who was clearly looking out for him going to leave Charlie's life when Charlie became engaged in order to flee to create his own life? And what would this effect have on Charlie? And what about little, innocent Jessie, who does walk into the night and disappear? -- the ones that became central to me, namely, what the heck happened to Jessie and did Charlie "do" something, were NOT answered!

It was a lot like enjoying a sandwich while I was eating it because it was so darned good only to find that after I had finished it I was strangely hungry for substance.

So if you are undeterred by a book lacking in some crucial "wrap-up" questions AND especially if you enjoy watching a super writer do her thing, then dip into "The Fiend." Just be prepared to be left hanging as I was!

[Ricarda Küper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ehrlicherweise, hat mir das erste Drittel dieses Buches am besten gefallen. Die Dialoge wirkten unglaublich authentisch und hatten für mich etwas Seltsam-Nostalgisches. Gerade diese leisen, zwischenmenschlichen Momente haben mich total abgeholt und neugierig gemacht, wohin sich die Geschichte entwickeln würde.
Der weitere Verlauf hat mich zwar weiterhin interessiert, gleichzeitig wurde die Handlung für mich aber zunehmend unübersichtlich. Durch die verschiedenen parallelen Stränge und Perspektiven fiel es mir irgendwann schwer, den Überblick zu behalten und emotional dranzubleiben. Besonders gegen Ende hatte ich das Gefühl, dass vieles eher angedeutet als wirklich aufgelöst wird, sodass ich nach dem Zuklappen des Buches eher verwirrt als erfüllt zurückgeblieben bin.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 — this is quite good. Much better than Dorothy Hughes’ In A Lonely Place (which I just reread), and better than I remember *Beast in View*, which didn’t impress me all that much. So my view of Millar has now been much improved.

[Christine Mathieu · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked this book in the early 1980's, but some novels just don't stand the test of time.
Now I'll start reading "A Stranger in my Grave" which was my favorite Margaret Millar crime novel way back then.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I need to find more of her books 📚!!