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Midnight Blue
Lew Archer was out for a little target practice. Just a deserted old estate in the canyon where Archer could get away from the Hollywood rat race and sharpen his shooting skills down in the meadow. But he found two things there he wasn’t expecting. One was a crazy old vagrant that had set up in dilapidated gatehouse. And two was a glittering red object on the ground. It was a red enameled fingernail that just happens to still be attached to its owner. A young blonde who was strangled, buried and very much dead. Now Lew Archer’s chance to get away from it all, just got away. And the wild old vagrant has decided to runaway too!
- GenresMystery
30 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 30, 2010
31 people are currently reading
70 people want to read
About the author
Ross Macdonald
160 books814 followersRoss Macdonald is the pseudonym of the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar. He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer.
Millar was born in Los Gatos, California, and raised in his parents' native Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, where he started college. When his father abandoned his family unexpectedly, Macdonald lived with his mother and various relatives, moving several times by his sixteenth year. The prominence of broken homes and domestic problems in his fiction has its roots in his youth.
In Canada, he met and married Margaret Sturm (Margaret Millar)in 1938. They had a daughter, Linda, who died in 1970.
He began his career writing stories for pulp magazines. Millar attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a Phi Beta Kappa key and a Ph.D. in literature. While doing graduate study, he completed his first novel, The Dark Tunnel, in 1944. At this time, he wrote under the name John Macdonald, in order to avoid confusion with his wife, who was achieving her own success writing as Margaret Millar. He then changed briefly to John Ross Macdonald before settling on Ross Macdonald, in order to avoid mixups with contemporary John D. MacDonald. After serving at sea as a naval communications officer from 1944 to 1946, he returned to Michigan, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree.
Macdonald's popular detective Lew Archer derives his name from Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, and from Lew Wallace, author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Macdonald first introduced the tough but humane private eye in the 1946 short story Find the Woman. A full-length novel, The Moving Target, followed in 1949. This novel (the first in a series of eighteen) would become the basis for the 1966 Paul Newman film Harper. In the early 1950s, he returned to California, settling for some thirty years in Santa Barbara, the area where most of his books were set. The very successful Lew Archer series, including bestsellers The Goodbye Look, The Underground Man, and Sleeping Beauty, concluded with The Blue Hammer in 1976.
Macdonald died of Alzheimer's disease in Santa Barbara, California.
Macdonald is the primary heir to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the master of American hardboiled mysteries. His writing built on the pithy style of his predecessors by adding psychological depth and insights into the motivations of his characters. Macdonald's plots were complicated, and often turned on Archer's unearthing family secrets of his clients and of the criminals who victimized them. Lost or wayward sons and daughters were a theme common to many of the novels. Macdonald deftly combined the two sides of the mystery genre, the "whodunit" and the psychological thriller. Even his regular readers seldom saw a Macdonald denouement coming.
Millar was born in Los Gatos, California, and raised in his parents' native Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, where he started college. When his father abandoned his family unexpectedly, Macdonald lived with his mother and various relatives, moving several times by his sixteenth year. The prominence of broken homes and domestic problems in his fiction has its roots in his youth.
In Canada, he met and married Margaret Sturm (Margaret Millar)in 1938. They had a daughter, Linda, who died in 1970.
He began his career writing stories for pulp magazines. Millar attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a Phi Beta Kappa key and a Ph.D. in literature. While doing graduate study, he completed his first novel, The Dark Tunnel, in 1944. At this time, he wrote under the name John Macdonald, in order to avoid confusion with his wife, who was achieving her own success writing as Margaret Millar. He then changed briefly to John Ross Macdonald before settling on Ross Macdonald, in order to avoid mixups with contemporary John D. MacDonald. After serving at sea as a naval communications officer from 1944 to 1946, he returned to Michigan, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree.
Macdonald's popular detective Lew Archer derives his name from Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, and from Lew Wallace, author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Macdonald first introduced the tough but humane private eye in the 1946 short story Find the Woman. A full-length novel, The Moving Target, followed in 1949. This novel (the first in a series of eighteen) would become the basis for the 1966 Paul Newman film Harper. In the early 1950s, he returned to California, settling for some thirty years in Santa Barbara, the area where most of his books were set. The very successful Lew Archer series, including bestsellers The Goodbye Look, The Underground Man, and Sleeping Beauty, concluded with The Blue Hammer in 1976.
Macdonald died of Alzheimer's disease in Santa Barbara, California.
Macdonald is the primary heir to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the master of American hardboiled mysteries. His writing built on the pithy style of his predecessors by adding psychological depth and insights into the motivations of his characters. Macdonald's plots were complicated, and often turned on Archer's unearthing family secrets of his clients and of the criminals who victimized them. Lost or wayward sons and daughters were a theme common to many of the novels. Macdonald deftly combined the two sides of the mystery genre, the "whodunit" and the psychological thriller. Even his regular readers seldom saw a Macdonald denouement coming.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 29, 2022
This Lew Archer short story by Ross Macdonald — Kenneth Millar — is in every way a miniature version of his protagonist in the long form. The title is derived from the clothes a dead girl is wearing in this swiftly-moving story. There are echoes of the betrayal and emotional damage for which the author would later become known. In this tale, you can almost feel Macdonald slowly transitioning to his later work, while not quite yet ready to abandon some minor literary idiosyncrasies Chandler spoke about in The Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler.
Midnight Blue begins quickly, as a short story should, with Archer heading up to Trumbull Canyon for some target practice. A crotchety old man with a gun tries to run him off as soon as he arrives. Once Archer calms the zealot down and gets to the business of setting up for shooting, he sees something red sticking out from some bushes. There is a hand attached, and a pretty young blonde as well. One look at her throat, and Archer knows she’s been murdered.
The crotchety old man takes off, and the police peg him for the killing. But Archer isn’t buying it. His holiday over, he begins questioning those who knew the girl while the cops search for the old man. He soon discovers the young girl was at a wienie roast on the beach the night she went missing. As in any Archer story, there is some family disfunction here, and the high school girl had a reputation for sleeping around. But whom did she go see after she left the beach? Was it the school counsellor, or someone else? Does her best friend know who she was meeting that night?
Even in so brief a story as this, Macdonald’s trademark of emotional damage is on display here, and there is much more going on than meets the eye. All in all, a terrific Lew Archer short story. It’s a morsel which should satisfy anyone who enjoys the genre, and especially fans of Macdonald's Lew Archer.
Midnight Blue is overall a splendid early example of Macdonald’s approach to the detective form. His later novels would take on deeper and subtler shades as he used the form to explore betrayal and damage. Though not as exciting a read as Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald put meat on the bones of the detective novel, and at his best, his later novels approached literature. A terrific — if early — short Lew Archer story, and an entertaining glimpse at a writer coming into his own.
Midnight Blue begins quickly, as a short story should, with Archer heading up to Trumbull Canyon for some target practice. A crotchety old man with a gun tries to run him off as soon as he arrives. Once Archer calms the zealot down and gets to the business of setting up for shooting, he sees something red sticking out from some bushes. There is a hand attached, and a pretty young blonde as well. One look at her throat, and Archer knows she’s been murdered.
The crotchety old man takes off, and the police peg him for the killing. But Archer isn’t buying it. His holiday over, he begins questioning those who knew the girl while the cops search for the old man. He soon discovers the young girl was at a wienie roast on the beach the night she went missing. As in any Archer story, there is some family disfunction here, and the high school girl had a reputation for sleeping around. But whom did she go see after she left the beach? Was it the school counsellor, or someone else? Does her best friend know who she was meeting that night?
Even in so brief a story as this, Macdonald’s trademark of emotional damage is on display here, and there is much more going on than meets the eye. All in all, a terrific Lew Archer short story. It’s a morsel which should satisfy anyone who enjoys the genre, and especially fans of Macdonald's Lew Archer.
Midnight Blue is overall a splendid early example of Macdonald’s approach to the detective form. His later novels would take on deeper and subtler shades as he used the form to explore betrayal and damage. Though not as exciting a read as Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald put meat on the bones of the detective novel, and at his best, his later novels approached literature. A terrific — if early — short Lew Archer story, and an entertaining glimpse at a writer coming into his own.
September 11, 2011
I got this for free... somewhere (I don't remember exactly where). It's classic Ross Macdonald - well written, gritty, with turns of phrase that are surprising and eloquent. It is a short story, so a quick read. Whether you're a fan of short mystery or Ross Macdonald, I think you'll like this one.
March 31, 2024
Private detective Lew Archer visits a canyon for shooting practice and stumbles upon the strangled body of a 17-year-old girl buried in the ground. Reporting it to the local highway patrol, Archer finds himself glimpsing into the complex and dark human relationships of a small local town.
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This is a short mystery novel published by American hard-boiled writer Ross MacDonald in 1960.
The story unfolds during a brief daytime period, with a murder case discovered in the morning resolved by 4 p.m. Various eccentric characters emerge as suspects, including an elderly man squatting in the canyon gatehouse, the victim Ginnie's father Mr. Green, school counselor Mr. Connor, and Ginnie's classmate's father Al Brocco.
This novella is also a tale of men who have lost their stable position as husbands with the changing times. Mr. Green, whose wife left him, Al Brocco, who killed his wife for infidelity, and Mr. Connor, a teacher whose wife left him due to his own infidelity. These men, whose perspectives were heavily influenced by the author's own upbringing without a father, face opposition from their daughters, wives, and non-WASP women who have gained independence through work and owning a car. This is significant.
These women are not the femme fatales or vamps found in crime novels up until the 1940s. They are ordinary women who challenge the conservative patriarchal society of the 1950s.
The contrasting fates of Mr. Brocco and his daughter also stand out. Both put an end to their extramarital affairs through murder, yet while the father receives support and eventually reintegrates into society after killing his wife, who was involved with an illegal immigrant from Mexico (as an intruder in the established society), his daughter kills a high school girl (a future member of established society) and is permanently expelled from society without any assistance. Anita, who communicated with male police officers via radio, ultimately dies alone in a corner of the male-dominated workplace. It is because of this reality that the ending of the story is all the more bitter, poignant, and heartbreaking.
------------------
This is a short mystery novel published by American hard-boiled writer Ross MacDonald in 1960.
The story unfolds during a brief daytime period, with a murder case discovered in the morning resolved by 4 p.m. Various eccentric characters emerge as suspects, including an elderly man squatting in the canyon gatehouse, the victim Ginnie's father Mr. Green, school counselor Mr. Connor, and Ginnie's classmate's father Al Brocco.
This novella is also a tale of men who have lost their stable position as husbands with the changing times. Mr. Green, whose wife left him, Al Brocco, who killed his wife for infidelity, and Mr. Connor, a teacher whose wife left him due to his own infidelity. These men, whose perspectives were heavily influenced by the author's own upbringing without a father, face opposition from their daughters, wives, and non-WASP women who have gained independence through work and owning a car. This is significant.
These women are not the femme fatales or vamps found in crime novels up until the 1940s. They are ordinary women who challenge the conservative patriarchal society of the 1950s.
The contrasting fates of Mr. Brocco and his daughter also stand out. Both put an end to their extramarital affairs through murder, yet while the father receives support and eventually reintegrates into society after killing his wife, who was involved with an illegal immigrant from Mexico (as an intruder in the established society), his daughter kills a high school girl (a future member of established society) and is permanently expelled from society without any assistance. Anita, who communicated with male police officers via radio, ultimately dies alone in a corner of the male-dominated workplace. It is because of this reality that the ending of the story is all the more bitter, poignant, and heartbreaking.
September 13, 2019
Some people dismiss Macdonald's work as a pale imitation of Chandler and Hammett, but I think they are short-changing him. It's true that his Lew Archer is a LOT like Chandler's Philip Marlowe, but Macdonald's books are notable for the author's fascination with relationships and how they play into the crimes people commit.
He was himself the father of a daughter and this short story centers on two young girls and their fathers. Being a father to a teen girl is a difficult task even when she has a mother. If the mother is absent, it's even harder. Both the fathers here are trying, but feel inadequate for the task.
Then there's the man who has no daughters but who is expected to feel "fatherly" toward the young girls he mentors. What happens if he isn't fatherly toward one of them. Will he kill her to prevent her from ruining his marriage and career?
Obviously, the author is limited in a 30-page story, but he makes some intriguing points about people and the unexpected things they do. This is a good short story. If you're not familiar with Macdonald's work and want to dip your toe in the water for only 99 cents, this a a fine place to start.
He was himself the father of a daughter and this short story centers on two young girls and their fathers. Being a father to a teen girl is a difficult task even when she has a mother. If the mother is absent, it's even harder. Both the fathers here are trying, but feel inadequate for the task.
Then there's the man who has no daughters but who is expected to feel "fatherly" toward the young girls he mentors. What happens if he isn't fatherly toward one of them. Will he kill her to prevent her from ruining his marriage and career?
Obviously, the author is limited in a 30-page story, but he makes some intriguing points about people and the unexpected things they do. This is a good short story. If you're not familiar with Macdonald's work and want to dip your toe in the water for only 99 cents, this a a fine place to start.
January 28, 2015
Her red painted fingernail caught his eye. It was in an unexpected place. In the leaf litter, on the ground at an abandoned and crumbling estate he liked to use as a practice shooting range when he needed to get away from the big city, Los Angeles. Now Lew Archer, private detective, has a body to report to the police and a death to avenge.
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Great Noire classic in a bite-sized story.
The first of many I plan to read.
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Great Noire classic in a bite-sized story.
The first of many I plan to read.
March 3, 2016
Excellent.
September 29, 2016
Short story from earlier times. Good read.
Figured out the plot before the end. Fun Read though. MacDonald books are old time detective stories for the most part.
Figured out the plot before the end. Fun Read though. MacDonald books are old time detective stories for the most part.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews