Strangers in Town: Three Newly Discovered Mysteries

Strangers in town Preface by Tom Nolan

Like all Ross Macdonald's fiction, this tale was inspired by, or incorporated details from, Ken Millar's life. One event that sparked "Strangers in Town" was a February 1950 dinner party at the Palm Springs home of movie-studio head Darryl F. Zanuck, to which the Millars were taken by Bennett Cerf (Margaret's publisher), who was staying in the nearby desert resort of La Quinta. When a medical thermometer packed in a suitcase for this trip was found reading 107°, a clue was born.

And maybe Darryl Zanuck — who made a show of having himself publicly shaved in the presence of his guests — plays a cameo role in "Strangers," cast against type as the gangster Durano, dwarfed by his baronial house and with "two days' beard on his chin, like motheaten grey plush."

Other characters receive a share of Millar's own experience, as the author finds common emotional cause with citizens superficially unlike him. Archer's African-American client, like Ken Millar, is an ex-schoolteacher. Like Millar — who grew up poor and got to college only by dint of his father's $2,000 in life insurance — the Hispanic lawyer Santana "had come up the long hard way, and remembered every step." The religious motto on the wall in Mrs. Norris’s house is straight out of Kenneth Millar's childhood.

The vignette of a teenager or young man being taught to dance by an older girl (as Lucy teaches Alex) occurs so often in Millar manuscripts and notebooks, it surely must have figured importantly in the author's past.

Another object purloined from Millar's history is the bolo knife sent from the Philippines by Alex's chief petty officer father. It's a duplicate of the souvenir Lt. j.g. Ken Millar sought in those islands in January of 1946, when he wrote his daughter Linda from the U.S.S. Shipley Bay: "I've been trying to find a good bolo knife to hang over our mantel."{" 'I've been trying to find a good bolo knife' ": Kenneth to Linda Millar, January 8, 1946, The Kenneth Millar Papers, Special Collections and Archives, UC Irvine Libraries.} The next day he reported to his wife: "I went ashore… I bought a bolo knife to hang on the wall… for $1.50…"{" 'I went ashore' ": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, January 9, 1946, The Kenneth Millar Papers, Special Collections and Archives, UC Irvine Libraries.}

The "Mickey" whom Durano has been sent to neutralize would be West Coast operator Mickey Cohen. The syndicate's caution "this year especially" is due to the Kefauver hearings on organized crime.

L.A. columnist's legman Morris Cramm appeared in the 1950 Archer novel The Drowning Pool. Reviewer Anthony Boucher found him delightful and urged Millar to use him again. Macdonald obliged.