The comparison between the question and the.smoke trailing off, was so perfect the ear is so fine and the tuning so good, there." "F'rinstance " - and he recited to me a sentence of hers with a simile in it: "Her question trailed off into the room like a faint cigarette track in the air, or something like that. The famous example quoted in Tom Nolan's biography (as much a life story of the two crime writers as it is a bio of the creator of Lew Archer) goes like this: Her husband, Ross Macdonald, once confessed a deep envy of her ability as a natural born writer as well. Margaret Millar is first and foremost a great storyteller. Just read Millar.There is no doubt about it. I’ll stop now: this is a great book, and there’s much more I could say. And the title is quite a bitter take on people. Much like when I read A Fatal Inversion earlier this summer, I finished How Like an Angel and thought to myself how incredibly structured it was. Most importantly, it doesn’t feel like a contemporary book because it’s not gruesome in its depiction of crimes nor is it structured the same way. While in some ways the books seems like a book of its time (there’s a reference to crazy tailfins on cars, it doesn’t seem to be a world that’s seen the dawn of the women’s movement), in another way it’s contemporary in its criticisms of the prison industrial complex. The mystery stayed pretty mysterious for me, and I felt that something was off about quite a few characters without being able to come up with a theory of the case. Millar doesn’t mock the members of the Tower, which was refreshing as well. That’s quite a feat, given that I tend to lose my train of thought during some interview scenes in mysteries.
Millar creates vivid characters, and their dialogues are witty and actually interesting. It’s a missing persons case that’s about five years old, and Quinn travels between Chicote and the Tower in a pretty confounding investigation. Quinn spends the night at the compound, leaves for another small town after being hired by Sister Blessing, a member of the Tower, to find out the whereabouts of a Patrick O’Gorman of Chicote, a relatively nearby oil town. Millar is great at capturing the desolate scenery, though I have to admit that I am not one for descriptions of local trees. The protagonist is Joe Quinn, a PI with a gambling problem who ran out of money in Reno, gets a ride to southern California, and visits a religious cult called the Tower after being dropped off in the mountains.
How Like an Angel is a spectacular book: the plotting is great, the characters are incredibly memorable, and I was totally surprised by the resolution. It’s one of the most memorable books I’ve read, and I think it’s even better than the only other Millar I’ve read, Beast in View. Originally published 1962, this edition International Polygonics, Ltd, 1982
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