If you are not a critic, or an academic specializing in
crime fiction or a reader obsessed with it, you are forgiven if all the
MacDonalds are just a bit confusing. In addition to John D. MacDonald, there is Ross Macdonald and Gregory Mcdonald.
What they have in common, besides ever-so-slightly different last names is that
they are all critically acclaimed crime writers, and all three have sold a helluva
lot of books. I once thought that I
should change my last name to McDonald if only to capitalize on the magic of
the name. Because my first name is Ronald, I quickly gave up on the idea.
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| John D. MacDonald |
The reason I am focusing on John D. is to honor on the last
day of a two-week celebration of the centennial of his birth and the
appropriately timed, handsome reissues of some of his work. Perhaps his most
esteemed work is the 1957 thriller, The
Executioners, better known to moviegoers as Cape Fear, a film so good they made it twice. MacDonald is also the creator of one of
America’s most popular fictional P.I.s, Travis McGee, who works out of his a
boat in Florida.
If you are a new reader though, it’s probably a good idea to
start with this first of his 21 Travis McGee novels because The Deep
Blue Good-By is the series exposition — building the character, painting
the setting, and developing the mechanics, which is how this P.I uniquely goes
about his business. The year is 1964,
and McGee is a tough but conscientious man of his times. Though we are not
mired down in his philosophy of good and evil, we are dealt at least some
thoughtful, literary exposure to the subject as the P.I. sees it. In this first of his series, we witness a strange
kind of murderer: A monster, maybe, but not a sophisticated, brilliant Ripley
or a sophisticated, obsessed Hannibal Lecter, but a coarse, rough-hewn charmer,
whose motives include but go well beyond self-enrichment, at least in the
monetary sense.
“There are men in the world who are compelled to destroy the
most fragile and valuable things they can find, the same way rowdy children
will ravage a beautiful home. Look at me, they are saying.”
In The Deep Blue
Good-By, McGee hunts for such a man, a twisted Romeo who sees fragile women
as an object to dominate, extort, and ravage. To break. If Travis McGee can be
warm and compassionate, he can also be vicious in pursuit of justice. After a
long sea-chase, the finale is a testament to up-close and very personal
violence.
Though John D. is not my favorite of the various McDonalds,
there is no doubt he is one of the masters of the genre. The good looking cover
of the recent rerelease shows the high regard in which he is held by current crime-writing luminaries. Praise comes from Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark and Jonathan Kellerman. Lee Child wrote the introduction to this edition.
Final note: Though a promised Travis McGee film is in
dry-dock, Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale, Brad Pitt — all of them — flirted seriously with the P.I. role in The Deep Blue Good-By. Also, over at The Rap Sheet, there’s more
interesting stuff on the 100th birthday of John D, especially a gallery of old
John D. covers.
Happy birthday, John.
2 comments:
That's really interesting, even to us crime writers who never published anything more than one brilliant locked-room mystery short story.
I think Ronald Writer McDonald has a nice ring to it. Cheers from the Land of Fog.
And many cheers in return to a writer of a brilliant short story and some serious very relevant social justice books as well.
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