The Dark Tunnel

The Dark Tunnel may be the first novel by “among the giants of last century crime fiction”, Kenneth Millar. The very first edition was printed by Dodd, Mead & Co. in the mid 1940s New You are able to, an excellent-condition copy which was costing US$8,500 by January 2020[update]. Millar’s biography describes The Dark Tunnel as “a hybrid of old-fashioned puzzle-mystery, Buchanesque spy adventure, and Chandleresque expose of sexual perversion.

Being an author, Miller was affected by John Buchan and Raymond Chandler, using the Dark Tunnel bearing a powerful resemblance towards the Thirty-Nine Steps, and echoing Chandler’s hallmarks of “rough-and-ready humor, its extravagant similes, and it is more lurid occasions and descriptions”.

Millar’s protagonist is Professor Robert Branch, a dichotomous character heavily affected by the Professor Millar themself. Branch has studied T. S. Eliot, W. C. Handy, Norse mythology, and Shakespeare Branch is skilled in lock picking, sports, and offers a Physician of Philosophy.