Meet Me at the Morgue

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Ross Macdonald’s real name was Kenneth Millar. Born near San Francisco in 1915 and raised in Ontario, Millar returned to the United States as a young man and published his first novel in 1944. He served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and was awarded their Grand Master Award as well as the Mystery Writers of Great Britain’s Gold Dagger Award. He died in 1983.

I met the boy on the morning of the kidnapping. It was a bright and blowing day. The wind was fresh from the sea, and the piled white cubes of the city sparkled under a swept blue sky. I had to force myself to go to work.

A bronze-painted sports car with a long foreign nose was standing at the curb in front of the County Annex building. I parked in my regular space, a few yards behind it. So far as I knew, there was only one bronze Jaguar in town. It belonged to Abel Johnson. I wasn’t surprised when Fred Miner, Johnson’s driver, emerged from my second-floor office and started down the outside steps to the street.

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