Millar Cover Reveal #1: BEAST IN VIEW and AN AIR THAT KILLS

The long wait is over. Over the coming months we will be announcing new digital editions of Margaret Millar's celebrated writings with cover reveals and links to purchase.

Soon to follow will be the announcement for the print schedule of the Complete Works of Margaret Millar.

For the first reveal we're sharing two of Millar's most celebrated novels, including the book that won her the 1956 Edgar Award for Best Novel. 

You may recognize the handiwork on these illustrations. That's because Syndicate is working with artist Jeff Wong (who did the Soho Crime edition of GBH by Ted Lewis). What's so cool about having Jeff work on these covers, beyond the fact that he's an amazing artist, is that Jeff is also the foremost (and I MEAN FOREMOST) collector of Ross Macdonald in the world. Macdonald's real name was Ken Millar. You got it. Mr. Maggie Millar. So it's a bit of a passion project for Jeff, evidenced by the two covers below.

AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER
BARNES & NOBLE | AMAZON | GOOGLE | KOBO | iBOOKSTORE

 

Hailed as one of the greatest psychological mysteries ever written and winner of the 1956 Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Novel, Beast in View remains as freshly sinister today as the day it was first published.  

Thirty-year-old Helen Clarvoe is scared and all alone. The heiress of a small fortune, she is resented by her mother and, to a lesser degree, her brother. The only person who seemingly cares for her is the family’s attorney, Paul Blackshear. A shut-in, Helen maintains her residence in upscale hotel downtown. 

But passive-aggressive resentment isn’t the only thing hounding Helen Clarvoe. A string of bizarre and sometimes threatening prank phone calls has upended her spinster’s routine. Increasingly threatened, she turns to a reluctant Mr. Blackshear to get to the bottom of these strange calls. Originally doubtful of their seriousness, Blackshear quickly realizes that he is in the midst of something far more nightmarish than he thought possible. As he unravels the mystery behind the calls the identity behind them slowly emerges, predatory and treacherous.

AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER
BARNES & NOBLE | AMAZON | GOOGLE | KOBO | iBOOKSTORE

 

A gripping novel of ordinary lives ripped apart by lust, deceit, adultery, conspiracy and betrayal. 

On a Saturday night in April, Ron Galloway's friends have all arrived at his Ontario lakeside vacation lodge for a boys' weekend without their wives. But as the night wears on and the host himself doesn't arrive, the party turns sour. Then Ron Galloway's suspicious wife, convinced he is having an affair and trying to track him down, arrives on the scene, followed by the police. It is clear something is very wrong. 

In the hours and days that follow Ron Galloway's disappearance, the secret of an ugly infidelity comes to light, tearing apart Galloway's circle of friends and destroying two marriages. Did Ron Galloway commit suicide to escape his own unforgivable betrayals? What sinister set of circumstances brought him to his desperate end, and how will his survivors cope with the truth without tearing one another apart?

Never has GBH been praised so much!

A pulp-fiction triumph worthy of Jim Thompson or James Ellroy. I can’t remember the last time I turned pages so eagerly.
— John Powers, NPR's FRESH AIR
GBH by Ted Lewis. Afterword by Derek Raymond.

GBH by Ted Lewis. Afterword by Derek Raymond.

The swan song of a noir master finally gets its due. GBH, the late Ted Lewis' final and some say greatest (I might argue for another) novel, is finally getting its day in court and the critics are placing it where it belongs, in the cannon, among the pulp and noir greats.

So here's what's being said:

NPR's FRESH AIR "Gangsters, Goons, and 'Grievous Bodily Harm' in Ted Lewis' London"

NPR Fresh Air critic John Powers writes that, "At his best, [Lewis] achieves something only a handful of crime writers ever do — the chilling sense of cosmic fatality that links noir anti-heroes to the likes of Oedipus and Macbeth" and of Lewis' celebrated, claustrophobic, and brutal Get Carter he writes, "Get Carter is one of the best-ever fictional portraits of a small, industrial English city with its tawdry shops, dingy rooming houses, and suffocating air of decline from something that wasn't that great to begin with."

You can listen to the whole piece on Lewis HERE.

 

BOOKPAGE

Simple and to the point, BookPage dubs GBH: "Lewis' masterpiece."

 

THE LIFE SENTENCE "The Grievous Life of Ted Lewis"

Lisa Levy's brilliant new crime and mystery fiction focused website published a wonderful, and thorough, piece on Lewis and GBH by Brian Greene, which among other things, says: "While [Get Carter] will likely always be the most noted of Ted Lewis’s nine novels, GBH, the final book Lewis published, is his masterwork."

That rest can be read HERE.

 

THE BARNES & NOBLE REVIEW"Ted Lewis and His Kitchen Sink Thrillers"

The online literary review of the nation's largest brick & mortar bookstore chain, and the company where I had my first book related job, ran a terrific review by Charles Taylor about the Carter Trilogy and GBH. Taylor pulls no punches: "Lewis remains a sharp social anatomist of the hopelessness and soul-sucking dinginess of his era. Starting with [Get Carter], Lewis sketched the horror of a Britain where home was the kitchen sink, the sodden bar towel, the decrepit industrial landscape."

You can read the rest of Charles Taylor's review HERE.

 

And hopefully there's more to come!

BILLY RAGS and BOLDT Released Today

The mistake most cons make is to try and fight the pictures in their minds, to black them out with sleep. But that never works. It’s better to approach the problem from the opposite direction, to make the pictures even brighter, bring them into sharper focus, move around in them, stage manage them, make them work for you as an al¬ternative reality, tire out your mind by trying to make the unreal real and giving the shadows form.
— Ted Lewis, BILLY RAGS

While Boldt is admittedly not the cream of Ted Lewis' career, Billy Rags ranks among his best work. Based in part in part on the diaries of real-life armed robber-turned journalist John McVicar, Billy Rags is a eye-opening portrait of life in a British maximum security prions as well as a moving portrait of one man's struggle for and with freedom. Bronson eat your heart out. 

The literary quality of the book was such that its original publication in the US was by Harper's Magazine Press. 

And today marks the first time either of these books have been available in eBook.