"AMONG THE BEST AMERICAN NOVELISTS OF HIS GENERATION"

(MACDONALD, Ross) MILLAR, Kenneth. Trouble Follows Me. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1946. Octavo, original gray cloth, original dust jacket. $1500.

First edition of the second novel by Macdonald, famed as the successor to Chandler and Hammett—one of only four novels published under his birth name of Kenneth Millar—a handsome copy in the original dust jacket.

Best known as Ross Macdonald for his award-winning Lew Archer detective series, Millar initially wrote and "published four excellent… suspense novels under his own name" (Bill Pronzini). Prior to taking the pen names of John Macdonald and John Ross Macdonald before adopting Ross Macdonald, Millar published his first novel, Dark Tunnel (1944), while working on a doctorate at the University of Michigan. He completed Trouble Follows Me, a fast-paced spy thriller, "on board ship while serving in the navy. His third and fourth books, Blue City (1947) and Three Roads (1948), in which he turned to the hard-boiled style," set Millar on a path toward his first Lew Archer novel, Moving Target (1949) (Magill III:1138). Deemed the successor to Chandler and Hammett, he became the "best-known and most highly regarded crime-fiction writer in America" (New York Times). Many "ranked him among the best American novelists of his generation" (Nolan, 11). Bruccoli Checklist:3-4. Bruccoli & Layman, 243. Hubin II:573. Reilly, 987.

Book fine; light edge-wear to near-fine price-clipped dust jacket.