Росс Макдональд: Dark Tunnel

In On Crime Writing Macdonald says, “Detective story writers are often asked why we devote our talents to working in a mere popular convention. One answer is that there may be more to our use of convention than meets the eye … The literary detective has provided writers since Poe with a disguise, a kind of welder’s mask enabling us to handle dangerously hot material.” He was, of course, talking about Lew Archer and the Archer series. But he might also have been referring to this and his other early novels.

Like all of Macdonald’s work, The Dark Tunnel is a novel of insight, ambition and social commentary disguised as pure entertainment. The fact that it succeeds on this level as well as on that of spy thriller and suspense novel – and the concomitant fact that 36 years after its publication it can be read and appreciated as much more than a literary and/or historical curiosity – is a tribute to the talent and vision of Kenneth Millar and his alter ego, Ross Macdonald.

Bill Pronzini

San Francisco, California

DETROIT IS USUALLY HOT and sticky in the summer, and in the winter the snow in the streets is like a dirty, worn-out blanket. Like most other big cities it is best in the fall, when there is still some summer mellowness in the air and the bleak winds have not yet started blowing down the long, wide streets. The heart of the city was clean and sunlit on the September afternoon that Alec Judd and I drove over from Arbana. The skyscrapers stood together against the powder-blue sky with a certain grotesque dignity, like a herd of frozen dinosaurs waiting for a thaw.

Alec drove his car into a parking-lot off Jefferson and we got out and headed for the Book Tower Building. His legs were not long for his height, a couple of inches less than my six feet, but his long, aggressive stride compensated for the length of his legs and I had to stretch mine to keep up with him. At thirty-nine he was so fit that years of deskwork had failed to bow his shoulders.

“Well, here we go,” he said. “Wish me luck.”

“Like hell I will. You know what I think of your going in the Navy. Anyway, I’m the one that needs the luck.”

“You don’t have to worry, they’ll take you.”

“Maybe,” I said. “The Army turned me down last year.”

“That was last year. They’ve given up using Superman as a standard.”

“Perhaps the Army has. The Navy’s still pretty fussy, I hear. They want only men with hawk eyes who were born with a caul and can’t drown.”

“Where does that leave me?” Alec said. “You’ve got ten years on me.”

“They’ll snap you up in a hurry, and you know it. They’ve been casting yearning glances at you ever since Pearl Harbor.”

Behind his optimistic square face and casual wisecracking manner Alec had a brain that cut through administrative work like a buzz saw and stacked it in neat piles like lumber. He had been head of the War Board at Midwestern University since war broke out and had piloted the university through the transition from a peacetime to a wartime program.

His mind was as broad and humorous as his mouth, but when he got hold of an idea he held on like a bulldog. Now he had the idea that he wasn’t doing enough for the war effort and should join the Navy.

We walked the rest of the way to the Book Tower Building in silence and took the elevator to the Naval Procurement offices on the ninth floor.

The brown-faced officer behind the information desk stood up and put out his hand when Judd told him his name. “I’ve heard about you, Dr. Judd. I’m pleased to meet you, sir. My name’s Curtis.”

“How do you do, Lieutenant,” Judd said as they shook hands.

“Didn’t you help set up the V-12 program at Midwestern?” the officer asked.

“That’s right. By the way, this is Dr. Branch.”

Curtis and I shook hands. “I’ve heard your name, too, Dr. Branch,” he said with an expression that couldn’t remember where.

“I’m secretary of the War Board,” I offered. “Not forever, I hope.”

“What can I do for you gentlemen?” asked Curtis.

“Tell us how to get into the Navy,” Judd said. “I’ve sent hundreds of boys over here in the last couple of years but I don’t know what to do now that I’m here myself.”

“It’s easier to get in than to get out,” Curtis said with a white enamel smile, “if you’ve got the qualifications. Let’s see, I’d better take you one at a time.”

He picked up a pen and took a slip of paper from a pile in the drawer of the desk. Then he turned to Alec and asked with a smile, “How many years of college?”

“Too many,” Alec said. “About eight as a student, I guess, and fifteen as a teacher.”

“That should be enough, eh? Dr. Branch?” He picked up another slip.

“Seven years as a student, and I’ve been teaching five.”

“Well,” Curtis said, “the first thing you men have to do is have your eyes tested. So many are rejected on account of eyes that we put that test first. Just take these slips down the hall and have a chair.” He handed us our slips and pointed to the right. “And Dr. Branch, you’d better take your glasses off to rest your eyes while you’re waiting for the doctor.”

I took off my glasses. Curtis said, “Good luck,” as we went out the door. I followed Alec down the hall to the bare anteroom of the eye-testing department, and we sat down on two folding chairs against the wall.

I returned to the subject that Alec and I had been arguing over for days: “I still don’t get it, Alec. You’re an irreplaceable man doing an essential job. What the hell do you want to join the Navy for?”

He said with the cheerfulness of an obstinate man who intends to go right on being obstinate: “I told you. I have an urge to know what the wild Waves are saying.”

“I’m trying to be serious and all you do is make lousy puns. It’s not that I care what you do. I’m wondering what’s going to happen to the War Board after you leave.”

“It’ll muddle along the same as it has for the last two years. I’m not indispensable. Nobody’s indispensable, except Harry Hopkins. And anyway, they haven’t taken me yet.”

“They will,” I said. “They’ll send you to Fort Schuyler for indoctrination and then give you a job somewhere doing exactly what you’re doing now. Your character is your fate, and you’re an executive. They’ll keep you away from water as if you had hydrophobia, and put you aboard an office building.”

“Not if I can help it.” His jaw pushed out. “I’m tired of fighting this war with the seat of my pants.”

“Johnny wants a gun,” I said bitterly. “Where would we be if everybody felt like that? It takes a lot of guts sometimes to go on holding down a civilian job when you want to get into the fun and games.”

Alec didn’t like that. He flushed and snapped, “I suppose Guadal and Salerno were fireworks displays.”

“Not to the men who were there. That’s not what I mean and you know it. I mean simply that you’re more useful where you are than you would be anywhere else.”

“What about you?” Alec said. “Have you a hidden talent for naval warfare? What’s the War Board going to do without a secretary?”

“You’re confusing the issue. If the Navy doesn’t get me, the Army will. They turned me down last year but they won’t this year. And I just happen to prefer the Navy, if I can get in. I like water better than land.”

“My position exactly.”

“Like hell it is. You’re too old for the draft, and you’ll never see sea duty anyway, unless you go to sea in a filing cabinet.”

“That’s right,” Alec said with a grin that did not change the stubbornness of the jaw. “Make mock of my grey hairs.” He hadn’t any: the close-cut nap of hair on his head was as black as mine.