A MASTER OF SUSPENSE Margaret Millar (1915-1994) was an internationally popular author whose well-crafted and sharply-written books pioneered the subgenre of psychological suspense. In a nearly 50-year writing career - which began in her native Canada and continued in Southern California - she earned the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar and Grand Master Awards, and the enthusiasm of such discriminating readers as Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, W.H. Auden and Truman Capote.

Best-known for her novels, Margaret Millar also wrote a handful of short stories, tales much admired by peers (including her husband Kenneth Millar, who used the pseudonym Ross Macdonald) but never collected in book form. Now Macdonald's biographer Tom Nolan has gathered and introduced those stories in this volume, which includes two all-but-unknown novellas from the 1940s. Here are half-a-dozen exhibits in evidence of the case made by English author and critic H.R.F. Keating, who judged: 'No woman in twentieth-century American mystery writing is more important than Margaret Millar.'

The Couple Next Door is the 15th in the Crippen & Landru 'Lost Classics' series. The cover design is by Deborah Miller.