The Dark Tunnel

{{short description|1944 crime novel}}

{{use mdy dates|date=September 2024}}

{{Infobox book

| name = The Dark Tunnel

| image = TheDarkTunnel.jpg

| alt =

| caption = First-edition book cover

| author = Kenneth Millar

| country = United States

| genre = {{hlist|Crime|mystery|spy}}

| publisher = Dodd, Mead & Co.

| pub_date = 1944

| media_type = Print

}}

The Dark Tunnel is the first novel by "one of the giants of twentieth century crime fiction", Kenneth Millar. The first edition was published by Dodd, Mead & Co. in 1944 New York, a fine-condition copy of which was priced at {{US$|8500}} {{as of|2020|01|lc=yes}}. Millar's biography describes The Dark Tunnel as "a hybrid of old-fashioned puzzle-mystery, Buchanesque spy adventure, and Chandleresque exposé of sexual perversion. Because of the latter, a 1950 paperback reprint was subtitled "The story of a homosexual spy".

As an author, Millar was influenced by John Buchan and Raymond Chandler, with The Dark Tunnel bearing a strong resemblance to The Thirty-Nine Steps, and echoing Chandler's hallmarks of "rough-and-ready humor, its extravagant similes, and its more lurid events and descriptions".

Millar's protagonist is Professor Robert Branch, a dichotomous character heavily influenced by the Professor Millar himself. Branch has studied T. S. Eliot, W. C. Handy, Norse mythology, and William Shakespeare; Branch is skilled in lock picking, athletic, and possesses a Doctor of Philosophy.