The Dark Tunnel

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PRIOR TO THE PUBLICATION of the first Lew Archer novel, The Moving Target, in 1949, Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald) published four excellent if not highly successful suspense novels under his own name. The Dark Tunnel was the first of these (the others, in succession, were Trouble Follows Me [1946], Blue City [1947], and The Three Roads [1948]). It was written when Millar was 28-years-old, while he pursued a doctorate in English at the University of Michigan, and it was initially published by Dodd, Mead & Company in 1944, as part of their Red Badge mystery line.

Neither The Dark Tunnel nor any of the other three early novels involves the exploits of a Chandleresque (or, more properly, Macdonaldesque) private investigator, although their style may be termed hard-boiled and is in the same general vein as the later work featuring Lew Archer. Both The Dark Tunnel and Trouble Follows Me, in fact, are novels of homefront espionage during World War II: the plot of each, like a great many suspense stories of the period, is concerned with the activities of Nazi spies and saboteurs in the United States and Canada. Each also deals with other matters, including relevant social and psychological issues; even in the embryonic stages of his career, Millar/Macdonald was much too accomplished a writer to limit his material to a single melodramatic focus.

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