Customer Reviews

The Dark Tunnel

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My expectations of The Dark Tunnel were rather low. After all, Kenneth Millar wrote it in the early 1940's. Well before he renamed himself Ross Macdonald and many years prior to finding the narrative voice that characterizes his "mature" crime novels.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up this early entry in the Macdonald canon and found I could not put it down.

The protagonist and narrator of The Dark Tunnel is Robert Branch, an assistant professor of English at a fictitious university located some 50 miles outside Detroit. On the same day he is rejected from enlisting in the Navy because of poor eyesight, Branch becomes embroiled in a fast and furious mission to expose a Nazi spy ring that has infiltrated his school's campus.

To describe this compelling novel as fast paced would be an understatement. Much of it consists of nonstop action that unfolds like the TV show "24". But that's not its only virtue. The dialogue is wonderfully clever and the descriptive passages are remarkably original and evocative.

Some readers may object to the insensitive and politically incorrect ways homosexuality is referred to in the pages of this 60+ year old novel. But one has to remember that the social mores of that remote time differ radically from those of today. Hence one has to judge the book as a product of its time.

The Dark Tunnel is a very entertaining work of fiction. It demonstrates that Ross Macdonald's considerable talent as a novelist was evident early on and extends beyond the hardboiled crime genre. Highly recommended.

A fast-paced thriller from a man who is becoming one of my favorites. Good dialogue, full of frustrating dumb-asses who don't want to believe the truth, wiseacre humor. Already with this first novel, Ross Mac had learned to just tell the story and leave out extraneous stuff. There is both a literal and figurative "Dark Tunnel", and both are interesting. Great setting on a college campus. Far-fetched once or twice, but a really good read.