Bitter Tea and Mystery: Signing up for 20 Books of Summer 2026

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Signing up for 20 Books of Summer 2026: This is my eleventh year of participating in the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge. The event was originally hosted by Cathy at 746Books ...

Patti Abbott: FFB: IRON GATES, Margaret Millar

 Patti Abbott: FFB: IRON GATES, Margaret Millar

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Beast in View: Margaret Millar

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Beast in View: Margaret Millar: Beast in View by Margaret Millar was my pick from the latest Classic Club Spin . I have already read four books by Millar and enjoyed them ...

FFB Review: "THE FIEND" (1964) by Margaret Millar (Reviewed by Barry Ergang)

 From the archives … 

THE FIEND (1964) by Margaret Millar 

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

 

Charlie Gowen knows he shouldn’t be sitting in his car across the street from the school playground. He was ordered a long time ago against hanging around anywhere children congregate. “The conditions were impossible, of course. He couldn’t turn and run in the opposite direction every time he saw a child. Theywere all over, everywhere, at any hour.” When he sees nine-year-old Jessie Brant fall from the jungle gym, he is determined to warn her parents—even lecture them, if necessary—about caring for someone he believes to be a fragile little girl. But he needs to know where she lives, so in his green coupé he follows her and her girlfriend, Mary Martha Oakley, home.\

 

So begins The Fiend, an outstanding novel of psychological suspense by one of the most skillful writers ever to work in this genre. But to say much more about the storyline would conceivably spoil the hard-to-stop-reading experience, so I’ll refrain beyond citing generalities.

 

The most prominent characters include Kate Oakley, mother of the aforementioned Mary Martha, who verges on paranoia when it comes to her ex-husband Sheridan. Kate is convinced it is he who is watching the house from a green coupé, and who is doing anything and everything he can to torment her. Kate frequently calls her attorney, Ralph MacPherson, whenever she fears—however abstractly— that she’s being assailed by Sheridan.

 

The Brants, Ellen and David, Jessie’s parents, appear to be the almost stereotypical happily-married suburban couple. The operative word is appear. Their next-door neighbors are Howard and Virginia Arlington. They are childless, so Virginia dotes on Jessie like an adoring relative (or mother wannabe), often spoiling her by giving her gifts that Ellen feels are inappropriately expensive. When Jessie is ordered to return a twenty-dollar book to Virginia, Howard—whose marriage is more than a little rocky—presses twenty dollars in cash on the little girl, thus catalyzing a crucial future event.

 

Ben Gowen is Charlie’s older brother and, of necessity since their parents are dead, his caretaker, despite Charlie’s having a job he handles responsibly. Still living in the house he and Charlie grew up in, Ben is more than a little pleased when Charlie meets Louise Lang and sees the two of them develop a relationship that is leading to marriage, because then he’ll be able to find an apartment of his own to live in and finally cultivate a life apart from Charlie’s.

 

In the hands of a lesser writer, The Fiend would most likely become sensationalistic tripe. Ms. Millar takes mundane events and transforms them into a tense, page-turning experience. Readers who enjoy novels featuring characters adroitly delineated via their back stories, internal monologues and dialogues so that they virtually get up and walk off the page, are likely to savor this brilliantly-constructed novel.

 

Barry Ergang ©20016, 2021 

Some of Derringer Award-winning author’s Barry Ergang’s work is available at Smashwords and Amazon.

Bitter Tea and Mystery: The Iron Gates: Margaret Millar

Bitter Tea and Mystery: The Iron Gates: Margaret Millar: I especially like Margaret Millar's crime fiction novels because they are different. The focus is on the psychological aspects of crime,...

FFB Review: "THE FIEND" (1964) by Margaret Millar (Reviewed by Barry Ergang)

Barry is back this week with a review for Friday’s Forgotten Books. Make sure you check out the list at Patti’s blog. May your Friday be a good one that is fiend free.

THE FIEND (1964) by Margaret Millar

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Charlie Gowen knows he shouldn’t be sitting in his car across the street from the school playground. He was ordered a long time ago against hanging around anywhere children congregate. “The conditions were impossible, of course. He couldn’t turn and run in the opposite direction every time he saw a child. They

were all over, everywhere, at any hour.” When he sees nine-year-old Jessie Brant fall from the jungle gym, he is determined to warn her parents—even lecture them, if necessary—about caring for someone he believes to be a fragile little girl. But he needs to know where she lives, so in his green coupé he follows her and her girlfriend, Mary Martha Oakley, home.

So begins The Fiend, an outstanding novel of psychological suspense by one of the most skillful writers ever to work in this genre. But to say much more about the storyline would conceivably spoil the hard-to-stop-reading experience, so I’ll refrain beyond citing generalities.

The most prominent characters include Kate Oakley, mother of the aforementioned Mary Martha, who verges on paranoia when it comes to her ex-husband Sheridan. Kate is convinced it is he who is watching the house from a green coupé, and who is doing anything and everything he can to torment her. Kate frequently calls her attorney, Ralph MacPherson, whenever she fears—however abstractly— that she’s being assailed by Sheridan.

The Brants, Ellen and David, Jessie’s parents, appear to be the almost stereotypical happily-married suburban couple. The operative word is appear. Their next-door neighbors are Howard and Virginia Arlington. They are childless, so Virginia dotes on Jessie like an adoring relative (or mother wannabe), often spoiling her by giving her gifts that Ellen feels are inappropriately expensive. When Jessie is ordered to return a twenty-dollar book to Virginia, Howard—whose marriage is more than a little rocky—presses twenty dollars in cash on the little girl, thus catalyzing a crucial future event.

Ben Gowen is Charlie’s older brother and, of necessity since their parents are dead, his caretaker, despite Charlie’s having a job he handles responsibly. Still living in the house he and Charlie grew up in, Ben is more than a little pleased when Charlie meets Louise Lang and sees the two of them develop a relationship that is leading to marriage, because then he’ll be able to find an apartment of his own to live in and finally cultivate a life apart from Charlie’s.

In the hands of a lesser writer, The Fiend would most likely become sensationalistic tripe. Ms. Millar takes mundane events and transforms them into a tense, page-turning experience. Readers who enjoy novels featuring characters adroitly delineated via their back stories, internal monologues and dialogues so that they virtually get up and walk off the page, are likely to savor this brilliantly-constructed novel.

© 2016 Barry Ergang

Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s written work has appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. Some of it is available at Amazon and at Smashwords. His website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/. 

FFB: "BEAST IN VIEW" by Margaret Millar (Reviewed by Patrick Ohl)

Patrick is back today for a second appearance as part of  Friday’s Forgotten Books.   If you have not seen Patrick’s blog, At The Scene Of The Crime, you are missing a lot of good stuff.  Very much worth your time....

Helen Clarvoe is terrified. A girl named Evelyn Merrick has been harassing her and making veiled threats, all while carefully treading a legal line that ensures her victim can’t call the police and have something done about it. But soon, Evelyn decides to expand on her work instead of limiting her victim to Helen Clarvoe. She begins to terrorize everyone connected with Helen, starting with telephone calls and escalating into more and more vicious behaviour…

And so Helen turns to her lawyer, Paul Blackshear, who makes it his mission to track down Evelyn. But things aren’t quite as simple as that might sound. Half of the people who know Evelyn describe her as an insane girl who will destroy herself one of these days. The other half is shocked at the first half, and describe Evelyn as a saint who would do anything for a friend and whose kindness knows no limits. What is the secret behind the enigmatic Evelyn Merrick?

It’s the plot of Margaret Millar’s Beast in View, a 1955 novel that won the MWA’s Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1956. And you can tell why. This book is quite simply groundbreaking, but it has one of the most difficult endings to describe. The ending has since been extremely overused, especially by Hollywood. It has become one of the most cliché endings imaginable, and just one adjective can quite easily give it away (as it did for me). From page 1, I was convinced I knew the ending. So did that make the book less enjoyable?

Oddly enough… no! I was absolutely amazed at how Margaret Millar manages to pull off such an unconventional ending while playing perfectly fair with her readers. She never directly lies to us, you see. The only deceptions that are played out are those legitimately played out on the investigator, Paul Blackshear. And when the ending comes, you can really see why people back in 1956 were so astounded by it. It is one of Margaret Millar’s trickiest bits of misdirection, and even if you know the ending you can admire her for inventing the ending in the first place, and then for the clever misdirection with which people were fooled back when this twist was new.

And even though this twist now seems as old as the Great Wall of China, there is plenty of emotional resonance to the ending nonetheless, with an absolutely perfect last sentence that encapsulates the book’s beauty and tragedy. It really is a shame that, thanks to its overuse, this twist will likely not fool modern readers. I envy anybody who can read this book and be surprised by the ending.

Paperback coming September 2016

But that’s not all. I was also genuinely shocked to see the topic of homosexuality discussed quite openly in the book. To be fair, the words “homosexual”, “gay”, and “lesbian” are never used (although the derogative term “fairy” is used once), but it’s quite clear that these things are going on. At one point, a lesbian makes a pass at another woman. Before she does so, another woman leaves the room sneering that she prefers the “normal ones”. The lesbian, Bella, runs an indecent abode, is overweight, ugly, and generally repulsive. She only appears for a handful of pages. Yet Margaret Millar manages to somehow turn her into a compelling character. Bella admits that the world has been cruel to her, and so to cope she began to eat, and eat, and eat, until she became the woman that we see in the present day. Although we see all the ugly things about Bella, this painful monologue shows that there is far more to her than meets the eye. There’s another homosexual character who is very important to the story, but describing this person and his backstory would give major spoilers for something that happens well into the book. (While Bella appears near the end of the book, her inclusion is only minor and I have used it to demonstrate just how talented Millar was at writing characters.)

All this proves yet again that gosh darn it all, Margaret Millar could write, and her work really has been unfairly forgotten. The characters in this story are among the most memorable you will come across in any novel ever written. The atmosphere of menace and dread in this story are absolutely top-notch, and it really tackles some risqué subject matter for the 1950s. The ending, although original at the time, has unfortunately become cliché since then through overuse, but that doesn’t take away from its emotional power. But even if you know the ending, like I did, you will undoubtedly find much to admire in Beast in View. This is another masterpiece from Margaret Millar and has reminded me once again why I love her stuff so much.

Note: Beast in View has been reissued by the Orion Publishing Group under their Phoenix imprint. More information can be found at the publisher’s page here. U. S. residents can easily order the book from The Book Depository here.

Patrick Ohl ©2012

At 19 years of age, Patrick Ohl has already read the complete works of Agatha Christie and has almost done the same with John Dickson Carr. His taste in mysteries is very comprehensive, including the intellectual challenges of John Rhode, the psychological suspense of Margaret Millar, and the violent world of master thief Parker. He currently plans to write his autobiography, tentatively entitled I can’t stand postmodernism, and to sell millions of copies worldwide, gain international fame and influence, and use this to get some attention for criminally neglected authors such as this one. His reviews can be found on his blog, At the Scene of the Crime.