The novel was originally released under his real name, Kenneth Millar, by Alfred A. Knopf, while a condensed version was serialized in the August and September 1950 issues of Esquire.

[1] One of the novel's earliest translations was into Russian as a 1972 serialization in the literary review Znamaya, where what was perceived to be its exposure of the common cause between capitalism and the gangster ethic was greatly appreciated.

[6] Publicity for Macdonald's hardboiled third novel, Blue City, linked the author's name with James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, a comparison deprecated in the mixed reviews that the book received at the time, although The Chicago Sun noted that at least it was in a completely different league from Mickey Spillane.

The self-congratulatory tabloid editorial justifying anti-union violence or the list of books suppressed in the library from which "it was somehow comforting to know that the good people of the town … were protected against the lubricity of Rabelais, the immorality of Flaubert, the viciousness of Hemingway, and the degradation of Faulkner."

[14] Twenty-two-year-old John Weather has returned from the army, having served in the European Theater in the Second World War, only to find his estranged father had been shot two years previously.