Ross Macdonald - Blue City

[The] American private eye, immortalized by Hammett, refined by Chandler, brought to its zenith by Macdonald.

The New York Times Book Review

Macdonald should not be limited in audience to connoisseurs of mystery fiction. He is one of a handful of writers in the genre whose worth and quality surpass the limitations of the form.

Los Angeles Times

Most mystery writers merely write about crime. Ross Macdonald writes about sin.

The Atlantic

Without in the least abating my admiration for Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, I should like to venture the heretical suggestion that Ross Macdonald is a better novelist than either of them.

Anthony Boucher

[Macdonald] carried form and style about as far as they would go, writing classic family tragedies in the guise of private detective mysteries.

The Guardian (London)

[Ross Macdonald] gives to the detective story that accent of class that the late Raymond Chandler did.

Chicago Tribune

The Dark Tunnel

Trouble Follows Me

The Three Roads

The Moving Target

The Drowning Pool

The Way Some People Die

The Ivory Grin

Meet Me at the Morgue

Find a Victim

The Name Is Archer

The Barbarous Coast

The Doomsters

The Galton Case

The Ferguson Affair

The Wycherly Woman

The Zebra-Striped Hearse

The Chill

Black Money

The Far Side of the Dollar

The Goodbye Look

The Underground Man

Sleeping Beauty

The Blue Hammer

Ross Macdonalds real name was Kenneth Millar. Born near San Francisco in 1915 and raised in Ontario, Millar returned to the United States as a young man and published his first novel in 1944. He served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and was awarded their Grand Master Award as well as the Crime Writers Association of Great Britains Gold Dagger Award. He died in 1983.

FIRST VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EDITION, JANUARY 2011

Copyright 1947 and renewed 1974 by Kenneth Millar

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1947.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Millar, Kenneth (Ross Macdonald).
Blue City [by] Ross Macdonald.
New York, Knopf, 1947.
p. cm.
PZ3.M59943 B1 PS3525.I486
47004527

eISBN: 978-0-307-74072-4

www.blacklizardcrime.com

Cover design: Joe Montgomery
Cover photographs: (top) George Marks/Retrofile/Getty Images; (bottom) Dan Saelinger/UpperCut Images/Getty Images

v3.1

All the time youve been away from a town where you lived when you were a kid, you think about it and talk about it as if the air there were sweeter in the nostrils than other air. When you meet a man from that town you feel a kind of brotherhood with him, till the talk runs down and you cant remember any more names.

The city started sooner than I expected it to. In ten years it had crawled out along the highway, covering new farms with the concrete squares of suburban developments. On both sides of the highway I could see the rows of little frame houses, all alike, as if there were only one architect in the city and he had a magnificent obsession.

It wont be long now, the transport driver said. He yawned over the wheel, keeping his eyes on the road. I dont need any dago red to put me to sleep tonight.

You live here?

I got a room in a boardinghouse at this end. You could call it living, I guess.

Dont you like the town?

Its all right if you dont know any better places. He spat through his open window into the current of air that the trucks movement made, and a fine spray blew across the back of my neck. I call Chicago home. Thats where my wife is.

That makes the difference.

You married?

No, I said. Im traveling on my own.

Looking for a job, eh?

Thats right.

You shouldnt have any trouble here. Matter of fact, we need helpers down at the depot right now. Half the time I have to load my own truck. You strong enough?

Yeah, Im strong enough. But thats not the kind of a job I was thinking about.

Pretty good pay. Seventy cents an hour. You cant do better than that around here.

Maybe I can. Ive got connections.

You have? He gave me a quick look. I wasnt looking so good. I hadnt shaved or washed that day, and my clothes had been slept in.

He must have decided I was lying. He said with broad irony: Oh well, in that case, and stopped talking to me.

The highway had changed into the east end of the main street, half residential and half business. Neighborhood grocery stores, coal yards, gas stations, cheap taverns, big old rundown houses, a few churches with blank embarrassed faces. I couldnt remember the buildings ahead of time, but nearly everything was familiar once I saw it. I caught a whiff of the rubber factories on the south side, corrupting the spring night like an armpit odor. I watched the suppertime crowds on the street, looking for someone I might remember.

The driver applied the brakes, and the truck came to a stop at the curb.

Ill let you out here, bud. I cant take you down to the depot. He nodded toward the No Riders sticker on the windshield. But in case your connections dont pan out, you want to come down there. Its on Masters Street.

Thanks. And thanks for the ride.

I hoisted my canvas suitcase from under my feet and climbed down out of the cabin. The big truck moved away and left me standing on the curb.

I walked a couple of blocks in the direction the truck had taken, but I was in no hurry to go anywhere. The excitement I had felt on coming back to the city had worn off already. Men and women passed me going both ways, but they were nobody I knew. A policeman gave me a sharp glance. I realized that I must look like a bum, and the realization made me feel like one. I began to wonder for the first time that day if my connections in the town were worth anything. Perhaps they didnt even exist any more.

I passed a new apartment building whose windows were like holes in a box of light. Through one of them I caught a glimpse of a man and woman dancing to the radio, holding each other close. It was enough to bring back the feeling of loneliness that I had been having off and on for years. I wanted to know every room in every apartment in that building I had never seen before, and call everyone who lived there by his first name. At the same time I wished I had the power to destroy the building and everybody in it.

I hadnt had a fight for a long time, and I was spoiling for one.