Larry Millett (born 1947 in Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an American journalist and author. He is the former (retired 2002) architectural critic for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, a daily newspaper in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the author of several books on the history of architecture in Minnesota. He has also written a series of Sherlock Holmes mysteries set in the United States and Minnesota in the 1890s. The books feature the character Shadwell Rafferty, who assists Holmes in his American investigations.

Larry Millett
Born1947 (age 76–77)
Minneapolis, Minnesota
OccupationJournalist, author
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Chicago, St. John's University
SubjectCrime fiction (Sherlock Holmes), history of Minnesota, architectural history
Notable worksLost Twin Cities, Strange Days, Dangerous Nights, Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon and sequels
Website
larrymillett.com

Education

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Millett attended St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1969. He went on to Chicago, Illinois, where he obtained an English master's degree in 1970 from the University of Chicago.

Career

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Millett worked at the Pioneer Press from 1972 until 1984 when he had an opportunity to study architecture at the University of Michigan. When he returned to St. Paul in 1985, he became the newspaper's first architecture critic. He has written articles for several historical and architectural magazines in the Midwest, mostly focusing on works by Prairie School architects such as Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Millett's Lost Twin Cities is probably the best known of his works in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region largely because KTCA, a local public television station, created a video documentary by the same name which covered a few of the buildings in the book. The video was narrated by Dave Moore, a noted area TV journalist, and is often replayed when the station is running a pledge drive. In 2014, Millet was interviewed by Peter Shea for the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota. He has also been interviewed twice on the Northern Lights Minnesota Author Interview TV Series.

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  • Interview with Peter Shea at University of Minnesota, 2014 [1]

Bibliography

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Nonfiction

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  • The Curve of the Arch: The Story of Louis Sullivan's Owatonna Bank (1985) ISBN 0-87351-181-6 & ISBN 0-87351-182-4
  • Lost Twin Cities (1992) ISBN 0-87351-273-1
  • Twin Cities Then and Now (1996) ISBN 0-87351-326-6 & ISBN 0-87351-327-4
  • National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota (foreword, 2003) ISBN 0-87351-448-3
  • Strange Days, Dangerous Nights: Photos from the Speed Graphic Era (2004) ISBN 0-87351-504-8
  • AIA Guide to the Twin Cities: The Essential Source on the Architecture of Minneapolis and St. Paul (Paperback) (2007) ISBN 0-87351-540-4
  • Murder Has a Public Face (2008)
  • AIA Guide to Downtown Minneapolis (2010) ISBN 0873517202
  • Once There Were Castles: Lost Mansions and Estates of the Twin Cities (2011)
  • Minnesota's Own (2014)

Fiction

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Sherlock Holmes in Minnesota

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Other works

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  • Pineland Serenade (2020)
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