PATRICIA HIGHSMITH Born Mary Patricia Plangman on January 19, 1921, in Fort Worth, Texas, the only child of artist Jay Plangman and the former Mary Coates; parents divorced shortly after her birth, and she moved to New York City with mother and stepfather, Stanley Highsmith; grew up mostly under care of maternal grandmother. Graduated from Barnard College in 1942. Published short story “The Heroine” in Harper’s Bazaar in 1945. Worked as a freelance comic book scriptwriter, 1942–48, including romance comics for Marvel precursors Timely Comics and Atlas Comics. In 1948 stayed at Yaddo, artists’ colony in Saratoga, New York, along with Chester Himes, Truman Capote, and Katherine Anne Porter. Published first novel Strangers on a Train in 1950; rights purchased for small amount by Alfred Hitchcock, whose film version starring Farley Granger and Robert Walker was released the following year. Published The Price of Salt, a novel with a lesbian theme, as Claire Morgan in 1952; did not publicly acknowledge pseudonym until shortly before her death. Published The Blunderer (1954), followed by The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955), in which she introduced the continuing character Tom Ripley. Published Deep Water (1957), A Game for the Living (1958), and, with Doris Sanders, the children’s picture book Miranda the Panda is On the Veranda (1958). Moved to Sneden’s Landing, New York, where she lived briefly with the novelist Marijane Meaker. Published This Sweet Sickness (1960). Moved to Europe, living in Italy, England, and France. Published novels The Cry of the Owl (1962), The Two Faces of January (1964), The Glass Cell (1964), The Story-teller (1965), Those Who Walk Away (1967), and The Tremor of Forgery (1969), as well as a guide for writers, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction (1966). Returned to Tom Ripley with Ripley Under Ground (1970), Ripley’s Game (1974), The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980), and Ripley Under Water (1991). Published short story collections Eleven (1970), Little Tales of Misogyny (1974), The Animal Lover’s Book of Beastly Murder (1975), Slowly, Slowly in the Wind (1979), and The Black House (1981), as well as novels A Dog’s Ransom (1972), Edith’s Diary (1977), and People Who Knock on the Door (1983). Moved to a small village near Locarno, Switzerland, in 1981, where she remained for the rest of her life. Published novel Found in the Street (1986) and the short story collections Mermaids on the Golf Course (1985) and Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes (1987). Received Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture in 1990. In 1991 Highsmith’s mother died at the age of ninety-five. Died February 4, 1995, of aplastic anemia in Locarno, Switzerland, at the age of seventy-four. A final novel, Small g: A Summer Idyll, was published posthumously in 1995, as was the short story collection Nothing That Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories (2002).
DOLORES HITCHENS Born Julia Clara Catherine Dolores Birk on December 25, 1907, in San Antonio, Texas. Published poems while completing graduate studies at the University of California; enrolled in a nursing school. She worked as a nurse at Hollywood Hospital, and later became a teacher before pursuing a professional writing career. Married T. K. Olsen, whom she later divorced. Married Hubert Allen “Bert” Hitchens, a railroad investigating officer, who had a son, Gordon (later founder of Film Comment and contributor to Variety). Together they had a son, Michael. As D. B. Olsen, published two novels featuring Lt. Stephen Mayhew, The Clue in the Clay (1938) and Death Cuts a Silhouette (1939); twelve novels featuring elderly amateur sleuth Rachel Murdock: The Cat Saw Murder (1939), The Alarm of the Black Cat (1942), Catspaw for Murder (1943), The Cat Wears a Noose (1944), Cats Don’t Smile (1945), Cats Don’t Need Coffins (1946), Cats Have Tall Shadows (1948), The Cat Wears a Mask (1949), Death Wears Cat’s Eyes (1950), Cat and Capricorn (1951), The Cat Walk (1953), and Death Walks on Cat Feet (1956); and six novels featuring Professor A. Pennyfeather: Shroud for the Bride (1945), Gallows for the Groom (1947), Devious Design (1948), Something About Midnight (1950), Love Me in Death (1951), and Enrollment Cancelled (1952). Published play A Cookie for Henry (1941) as Dolores Birk Hitchens; novel Shivering Bough (1942) as Noel Burke; and novels Blue Geranium (1944) and The Unloved (1965) as Dolan Birkley. Co-wrote five railroad detective novels with Bert Hitchens: F.O.B. Murder (1955), One-Way Ticket (1956), End of Line (1957), The Man Who Followed Women (1959), and The Grudge (1963). As Dolores Hitchens, published two private detective novels featuring California private eye Jim Sader: Sleep With Strangers (1955) and Sleep With Slander (1960); as well as stand-alone suspense novels Stairway to an Empty Room (1951), Nets to Catch the Wind (1952), Terror Lurks in Darkness (1953), Beat Back the Tide (1954), Fools’ Gold (1958), The Watcher (1959, adapted for the television series Thriller in 1960), Footsteps in the Night (1961), The Abductor (1962), The Bank with the Bamboo Door (1965), The Man Who Cried All the Way Home (1966), Postscript to Nightmare (1967), A Collection of Strangers (1969), The Baxter Letters (1971), and In a House Unknown (1973). Jean-Luc Godard adapted Fools’ Gold into the 1964 film Band of Outsiders. Died in August 1973 in San Antonio, Texas.
MARGARET MILLAR Born Margaret Ellis Sturm on February 5, 1915, in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, to Henry William Sturm, who served as mayor of Kitchener, and Lavinia Ferrier Sturm. Attended Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate Institute, where she studied music, graduated at the top of her class, and first made passing acquaintance with Kenneth Millar, participating with him on the debate team and publishing work in the same issue of the KCI Grumbler, but they did not remember this acquaintance. Attended the university of Toronto, majoring in classics. Encountered Kenneth once more in the university library, where she was reading Thucydides in the original Greek, and they began dating shortly thereafter. Married Millar in 1938, the day after his graduation from University of Toronto; she did not graduate. Had a daughter, Linda, in 1939. Upon being ordered to rest in bed due to cardiac problems immediately after Linda’s birth, Millar read mysteries for the next two weeks and decided to try her hand at a novel. Published first novel, The Invisible Worm, in 1941 with Doubleday, featuring Paul Prye, a psychiatric detective, who later appeared in The Weak-Eyed Bat and The Devil Loves Me (both 1942). Moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1943 when Kenneth accepted an academic fellowship with the University of Michigan and quit his Toronto teaching job. Published Wall of Eyes (1943), featuring Toronto Police Inspector Sands, and a follow-up, The Iron Gates (1945), as well as a stand-alone novel, Fire Will Freeze (1944). Moved with her family to California, where Kenneth enlisted and served as an ensign in the Naval Reserves. Millar found work as a screenwriter, adapting The Iron Gates for Warner Brothers. The screenplay sale enabled Kenneth to quit his job as a teacher upon his return from the navy, and both husband and wife became full-time writers. (He would become celebrated for his Lew Archer novels, published under the pseudonym Ross Macdonald.) Bought a bungalow in Santa Barbara while Kenneth returned to Ann Arbor to finish his doctorate at the University of Michigan. Millar published three non-mystery novels, Experiment in Springtime (1947), It’s All in the Family (1948), and The Cannibal Heart (1949), some of which were based on her childhood as well as her daughter Linda’s. From then on, with the exception of the novel Wives and Lovers (1954) and the memoir The Birds and the Beasts Were There (1968), Millar published psychological suspense novels, all published by Random House and largely edited by the publisher’s crime fiction editor Lee Wright. Published Do Evil in Return (1950), Rose’s Last Summer (1952), and Vanish in an Instant (1952). Moved to Santa Barbara, California, where Millar would live for the rest of her life. Published Beast in View (1955), winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Linda was involved in a fatal hit-and-run car accident in 1956, killing a thirteen-year-old boy and seriously injuring two others, but was given probation after a trial. Published An Air That Kills (1957), The Listening Walls (1959), and A Stranger in My Grave (1960), nominated for a Best Novel Edgar Award. Rose’s Last Summer was adapted for Boris Karloff’s Thriller in 1960, and Beast in View was adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1964). Published How Like an Angel (1962) and The Fiend (1964), a sympathetic portrait of a pedophile that was nominated for the Edgar Award. Linda died in her sleep on Nov
ember 4, 1970, at the age of thirty-one. Published Beyond This Point Are Monsters (1970), dedicated to John Westwick, who as a young lawyer had represented Linda in the fatal car accident case. After a six-year hiatus, published three mystery novels featuring Hispanic lawyer Tom Aragon: Ask for Me Tomorrow (1976), The Murder of Miranda (1979), and Mermaid (1982). Published Banshee (1983); in the same year, Millar was named Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and Kenneth died of Alzheimer’s disease. Published Spider Webs (1986). Beginning in the late 1970s Millar suffered from macular degeneration, which destroyed her eyesight except for peripheral vision. Died March 26, 1994, age seventy-nine, in her Santa Barbara home. The Couple Next Door, a short story collection, was published by Crippen & Landru in 2004.
Note on the Texts
This volume contains four crime novels published in the 1950s by American women: Mischief (1950) by Charlotte Armstrong, The Blunderer (1954) by Patricia Highsmith, Beast in View (1955) by Margaret Millar, and Fools’ Gold (1958) by Dolores Hitchens.
Mischief was published in New York in 1950 by Coward-McCann, Inc. An English edition was published in 1951 by P. Davies.
The Blunderer was published in New York in 1954 by Coward-McCann, Inc. A paperback edition, retitled Lament for a Lover, was published the same year by Popular Library. An English edition was published in 1956 by the Cresset Press.
Beast in View was published in New York in 1955 by Random House. An English edition was published the same year by Gollancz.
Fools’ Gold was published in Garden City, New York, in 1958 by Doubleday & Company, Inc., as a selection of the Crime Club. An English edition was published the same year by T. V. Boardman as part of the American Bloodhound Mystery series.
Each of the texts published here is that of the first American edition.
This volume presents the text of the original printings chosen for inclusion here, but it does not attempt to reproduce non-textual features of their typographic design. The texts are presented without change, except for the correction of typographical errors. Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are often expressive features and are not altered, even when inconsistent or regular. The following is a list of typographical errors corrected, cited by page and line number: 16.20, humor.; 35.40, O.K?; 36.28, quickly.; 62.2, in negligee; 70.20, Jones.”; 76.5, corridor.; 96.13, was hint; 97.37, apprehended.; 100.22, her.”; 103.31, got.; 112.27, believe.”; 118.32, get to her; 130.38, your; 153.29, Osyter; 215.40, self-consciousnes.; 221.33, scriptwritten; 310.33, glases,; 324.31, Deartment,; 332.10, her,; 359.29, eath; 364.13, cervalat; 387.16, jams; 399.27; pouring; 406.7, women; 420.28, is,”; 453.19, can, Verna; 462.13, Mabel was; 490.28, waist; 500.28, she; 517.32, cab her; 520.38, father.; 522.13, beside; 525.7, Helen,; 547.3, into in.; 547.21, next the; 549.17, recognittion; 569.7, insufficent; 573.7, met; 589.7, godamn; 589.35, thinks; 599.25, sqawk; 626.1, you call; 660.28, shoulders; 679.5, showings; 692.35, some some.
Notes
In the notes below, the reference numbers denote page and line of this volume (the line count includes headings). No note is made for material included in standard desk-reference books. Biblical quotations are keyed to the King James Version. For more biographical information than is contained in the Chronology, see Sarah Weinman, ed., Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense (New York: Penguin Books, 2013); Jeffrey Marks, Atomic Renaissance: Women Mystery Writers in the 1940s and 1950s (Delphi Books, 2003); John Connolly and Declan Burke, Books to Die For (New York: Atria/Emily Bestler Books, 2012); Rick Cypert, The Virtue of Suspense: The Life and Works of Charlotte Armstrong (Susquehanna University Press, 2008); Charlotte Armstrong, “Razzle-Dazzle,” The Writer 66, 1 (January 1953); Joan Schenkar, The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2009); Andrew Wilson, Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith (London: Bloomsbury, 2003); Marijane Meaker, Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950’s (Cleis Press, 2003); Kathleen Sharp, “The Dangerous Housewife: Santa Barbara’s Margaret Millar,” Los Angeles Review of Books, November 28, 2013.
MISCHIEF
6.24 “Oh, dem golden slippers . . .”] Title of the 1879 song by James A. Bland (1854–1911).
12.2 Groucho Marx] Comedian (1890–1977), star with the Marx Brothers of Horse Feathers (1932), Duck Soup (1933), A Night at the Opera (1935), and other films.
59.2 “The time, the place, and the girl,”] Title of a 1946 film musical starring Dennis Morgan and Martha Vickers; the title had been used previously for an unrelated 1929 film musical.
THE BLUNDERER
136.1 L.] Lynn Roth, Highsmith’s lover during the time she was writing The Blunderer.
136.2 C’est plus qu’un crime, c’est une faute] “It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder”: remark attributed to Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe (1761–1840), on the occasion of Napoleon’s execution of the Duc d’Enghien for his involvement in a royalist plot. (The original form is more generally cited as C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une faute.)
137.7 “MARKED WOMAN,”] Film (1937), directed by Lloyd Bacon and starring Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, about a prosecutor’s efforts to convict a mob boss who runs a prostitution racket.
156.20 White-Russian refugees] Russian subjects who emigrated during or after the Russian Revolution and Civil War (1917–22).
171.22 Boadicea] Early British ruler (died c. 60 C.E.), queen of the Celtic Iceni tribe who led an uprising against Roman occupying forces.
184.16 Medusa] In Greek mythology, a monster, one of the three Gorgons; her hair consisted of venomous snakes, and anyone who gazed into her eyes was turned to stone.
195.34 Blackstone’s Commentaries] Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–69) by Sir William Blackstone, four-volume treatise on English common law, widely used in America before the Revolution.
195.36–37 Moore’s Weight of Evidence] A Treatise on Facts, or the Weight and Value of Evidence (1908) by C. C. Moore.
201.20 Scarlatti] Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757), best known for his keyboard sonatas.
215.8 34th Street terminal] Greyhound bus terminal built in 1935 in Art Deco style and demolished in 1972.
218.30 World-Telegram] The New York World-Telegram, founded in 1931 following the purchase of the New York Telegram by the Evening Herald; it became the New York World-Telegram and Sun in 1950, and ceased publication in 1966.
219.31 Jonah] Someone who brings bad luck to others; see Jonah 1:12: “And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.”
225.7 Raffaele Gagliano] Gagliano (1790–1857) was a member of the celebrated family of Neapolitan luthiers.
253.36–37 Reich Mir die Hand, Mein Leben] German translation of the duet “Là ci darem la mano” (“There we will give each other our hands”) from the opera Don Giovanni (1787) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte.
274.11 “The Tennessee Waltz.”] “Tennessee Waltz” (1946), song by Pee Wee King and Redd Stewart and a major hit for Patti Page in 1950.
275.29–30 Marquis de Sade’s memoirs] The many surviving writings of Donatien Alphonse François de Sade (1740–1814) do not include memoirs.
288.4 Hotel Commodore] The Commodore Hotel, built in 1919, located on 42nd Street near Grand Central Station. It was entirely remodeled in 1980 and is currently known as the Grand Hyatt.
290.24 Penn Station] The original Pennsylvania Station, built in 1910, occupied two city blocks between 7th and 8th Avenues and 31st and 33rd Streets. The Beaux-Arts building was torn down in 1963 and replaced in 1969 by the current station, beneath Madison Square Garden.
308.9 perron] Stone block used as a step.
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