That Old Grey Train by John D. MacDonald - PDF

Another "lost" and never anthologized John D. MacDonald story, this one from Sports Fiction Magazine, September 1947. I did some OCR and editing work on it, then exported to PDF. MacDonald was clearly a knowledgeable boxing fan, although the story is more about dealing with maturity and regrets rather than a sports adventure type of story. Bear in mind that main character is black and there is some language that may be offensive to some readers.

PDF -  That Old Grey Train by John D. MacDonald

Review: The Good Old Stuff

The Good Old Stuff by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This collection published in hardcover in 1982 and paperback in 1983 includes thirteen stories culled from the hundreds of stories MacDonald published in the pulp magazines between 1946 and 1952. They are the stories he considered the best and worthy or republication. So that right there makes this a must read for MacDonald fans. I thought the most interesting thing about this collection were the two stories that MacDonald, in his introduction, described as having a hero “who in some respects seems like a precursor to Travis McGee.” The stories - Breathe No More and From Some Hidden Grave - both feature Park Falkner, who in looks and skills does seem similar to McGee. Falkner doesn’t live on a boat at a marina but in a mansion on a private island. These two stories are a variation on the mystery formula of locking all the suspects in a room until the guilty party is found out. MacDonald’s wrinkle in these stories is that Park Falkner picks a crime to solve based on some chivalrous criteria and then invites the suspects to his private island so he can go to work breaking them down. I enjoyed these stories and their “formula” a lot. Park Falkner, and his sort of girlfriend and crime solving partner, Taffy Angus, are intriguing characters and it is clear from the writing that MacDonald had some affection for them. A bit surprised that he didn’t write more stories around these characters, but perhaps there was only so much he could do with the formula of bringing the suspects to the island. McGee as a “Salvage Consultant” who was free to roam certainly worked better to anchor a series. MacDonald's 1957 novel A Man of Affairs employs a variation on this private island theme and his 1959 release Please Write For Details brings all the characters to a mountain retreat in Mexico. So it is interesting to see MacDonald honing his techniques in these early stories. In 1984 he released More Good Old Stuff, which collected 14 more stories and the 27 stories in these two volumes represent all the early work MacDonald felt deserved preserving. Both are worth checking out.

View all my reviews

Review: The Executioners

The Executioners by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Having seen both versions of Cape Fear, films based on this novel, they have clearly tainted my perspective of the source material. The Cape Fears were excellent adaptations, not to say that the novel is weak, it’s very good, although I think that the films do a better job of maintaining the tension and terror, and have a superior climax. The films do a better job portraying the psychotic Max Cady. In the book he is introduced early then is “off camera” for most of the rest. One advantage of the novel is the clever and snappy banter between Sam Bowden and his wife Carol, although sometimes it falls flat as being too staged and cutesie for typical folks that aren’t brilliant writers. So yeah, my expectations were pretty high and I was somewhat disappointed. I've read better JDM, and this is one of those rare novels where the movies are better that the book. Three stars.

View all my reviews

Review: Seven

Seven by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Interesting collection published in 1971 as the popularity for MacDonald’s Travis McGee series was taking off. The four shorter stories were published in Playboy and likely solicited. “Dear Old Friend” has an epistolary structure where through four shifting attempts at a dictated letter we learn the story. “The Annex” is sort of a white light story or a dream of a dying man. “Quarrel” is a bit of hilarity about an “accidental play” via tape recording. “Double Hannenframis,” my favorite of the shorter stories, is a neat noir about an executive caught insider trading and siphoning cash. The three longer stories were all previously unpublished. “The Random Noise of Love” can best be summed up by what a friend says to the protagonist: “Don’t lose your head for a piece of tail.” Oops, too late. The story has a five-page obsessive description of the girl as she comes out of the shower, gets dressed, does her makeup, etc. Yes, he’s lost his head. “The Willow Pool” is novella length with multiple narrators each describing their view of the events, which is a good technique for broadening the scope of the narrative in ways it couldn’t otherwise. “Woodchuck” seems the class of the collection, with MacDonald at the top of his craft using concrete descriptive writing, insightful psychology, and wicked characterization via action in this long story about a man cynically seducing the wife of a man who works for him. The woodchuck of the title is a story within the story and MacDonald even pulls that digression off and makes it work thematically. Three of the stories I’d give five stars, but the others are not to that level.

View all my reviews

Review: The Lonely Silver Rain

The Lonely Silver Rain by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the 21st and final book in the Travis McGee series and I put it in my top five of the series. McGee, and his friend Meyer, have had numerous close calls with death in the novels leading up to this last McGee, and that theme continues. I won't spoil the ending for those who haven't read it yet. Felt pitch perfect to me. The story here has McGee tracking down and recovering a stolen yacht and in the aftermath he becomes a target for the Peruvian drug cartel. Plenty of action as McGee deals with the hit men coming after him. A further mystery is the strange pipe cleaner cats which are being left around his boat, it's a message he doesn't understand and that amps the tension from another direction as the novel progresses. What makes this one so good is that MacDonald delves deep into McGee's character as both character and author are feeling their mortality. Beautiful balance between the action adventure aspects and the McGee/MacDonald philosophy of life. Resonates as a great series finale, but it also works well as a stand alone.

View all my reviews

Review: Cinnamon Skin

Cinnamon Skin by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Number 20 of the Travis McGee series continues a couple of themes from where Free Fall in Crimson left off. McGee is still playing touchy-feely with Annie and he's still trying to help Meyer deal with his residual depression after his take down by the biker Dirty Bob. When Meyer's boat is blown up, killing his niece, we are in uncharted territory for the series. No salvage job for a client this time. It's all about revenge and MacDonald is at his best exploring the psychological depths of the characters. Structurally, the story is also quite similar to Crimson in that we have a powerful villain who is off stage until the end. We know him from stories of his exploits without actually seeing him in action. I'm not a fan of this structure, much prefer learning about a villain by having them do evil in real time. Also disappointed that we didn't get one of those great multi-scene climactic sequences that MacDonald was such a master at writing. Just one, slightly implausible, setup that delivers an uppercut for sure, but was much shorter than the usual McGee endings and that kept this from being one of the great books in the series. The high points are McGee and Meyer investigating to learn the villain's past, Meyer's recovery, and the varied settings as they go from Florida to Texas to upstate New York and eventually to Mexico. Good stuff, but just mid-tier for me.

View all my reviews

Review: Free Fall in Crimson

Free Fall in Crimson by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I started off liking this 19th book in the Travis McGee series as it quickly delves into solving the mystery of why a guy dying of cancer gets beat to death at highway rest stop. McGee's investigation takes him to a biker bar run by an old war buddy in search of a lead, which he finds. And then he's off to Hollywood and Lyssa Dean, an actress he helped in The Quick Red Fox, to track down the Director and some bikers/actors from a biker-movie. She steers him to Iowa and the set of movie about hot air ballooning. After that it just felt like the energy left the book even though there is a formidable villain. The problem is we mostly hear about this bad ass second-hand, instead of seeing him live an in action. At least until the ending, where he shows up in the flesh. Doesn't have MacDonald's trademark rollercoaster sequence of climactic scenes as do so many of the McGee books. Instead we have a quick confrontation, with a partially recycled device from, I think, Bright Orange for the Shroud, and an older, wiser McGee (not a spoiler) survives again.

View all my reviews

Review: The Green Ripper

The Green Ripper by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One of my favorites in the series because it forces Travis McGee to go all-in on a dark journey to avenge the murder of Gretel, the woman he fell in love with at the end of The Empty Copper Sea. The last quarter of this novel features one of MacDonald's best climactic concluding sequences. Before we get there, however, we start with the love struck McGee and the quick death of Gretel, gone by the end of chapter two. What follows is a brief investigation by McGee and Meyer, which prompts two different teams of federal-ish agents (one bogus, one real) to investigate McGee and Meyer. It all dead ends and a despondent McGee is told by everyone to give up and move on. McGee's response is to drop out of his life, which includes sending Meyer a letter with instructions about what to do if/when McGee doesn't come back, and to chase down one sliver of a clue. The middle has McGee assume a fake identity and infiltrate the militant wing of the Church of Apocrypha. At first McGee is locked up, but eventually the terrorists start trusting him and he begins training with them, which gives him the chance to learn each of their strengths and weaknesses. MacDonald jumps right to the extended conclusion and over the next fifty or so pages McGee battles with and proceeds to (still three books left in the series, so not a spoiler alert) eliminate all eleven terrorists using rocks, knives, guns, grenades, and probably a head butt or two. And thus, Gretel avenged, McGee is healed and ready to return to his houseboat moored in slip F-18, Bahia Mar marina, Fort Lauderdale, and resume his old life as a beach bum and salvage consultant. MacDonald delivers on all levels and you needn't be familiar with the rest of the series to enjoy this because it also works as stand alone thriller.

View all my reviews

Review: The Empty Copper Sea

The Empty Copper Sea by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Way back in the 1970s when the Travis McGee series was still fresh, we had to wait about four years between the 16th and this the 17th in the series. McGee had a rough go in The Dreadful Lemon Sky, maybe he was done? No, MacDonald took a break from McGee and took on Florida developers and a hurricane in his massive 550+ page novel Condominium, which came out the year before this one did. The return of McGee here is a bit a of a disappointment. I won't say MacDonald was going through the motions, because McGee and Meyer do plenty of investigating, but McGee is world weary and needed a break so up comes a cream puff of a case to help an old friend recover his reputation. Minimal action with lots of talking and ruminating. The thin story about a businessman who liquidated most of his assets, faked his death, and disappeared with a hot woman, is regurgitated over and over by everyone McGee and Meyer talk to. Gets boring pretty quickly. There is a twist, which I won't spoil, as it comes at the end, and the boring story becomes a mystery solved. It was an OK read, but skippable without any loss to the McGee legacy.

View all my reviews

Review: The Dreadful Lemon Sky

The Dreadful Lemon Sky by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you've been reading through the Travis McGee series sequentially—and this is probably my third time through—you can't help but notice, in this the 16th (of 21), that McGee's brushes with death are more frequent and more narrowly avoided. McGee is on his game in this one, however, and there is less talk of feeling his age and losing his step. He mentions luck a few times and he praises the skills of his opponent. MacDonald is sowing more seeds for the end of McGee. But not yet. As usual, plenty of good action scenes and the climactic sequence involving a jeep with a blade and some fire ants is top notch. This book also features, at least up to this point in the series I think, the best tag-team investigating by McGee and Meyers as MacDonald makes full use of their different skill sets to completely unravel the mystery of what happened to Carrie Milligan. One of the things I like most about MacDonald's approach is that he doesn't rely on the mystery trope of wrapping things all up in some final scene that solves the whodunnit. McGee and Meyer are incrementalists using con, smarts, sneakery and thuggery to put the puzzle together piece by piece. They toss out theories and test them. They poke and prod to see who gets squirrelly. It's a fun process to follow and makes this one my top McGee's.

View all my reviews

Review: Murder for the Bride

Murder for the Bride by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was MacDonald's second novel, published in 1951, and he steered completely away from the hard-boiled detective style of his first novel and produced an espionage novel full of Russian spies and ex-Nazis. But this is no John LeCarre style spy novel because it features an everyman protagonist in the classic noir sense. Dillon Bryant is a geological engineer scouting oil formations in Venezuela. He's fresh from a three-day honeymoon but has left his wife home in New Orleans. When he receives a letter saying that his wife is in trouble, he rushes home, only to find when he gets to his apartment that his wife has been murdered. The plot takes an intriguing turn as we learn that he'd married Laura after a quick whirlwind romance and that she is not what she seemed. Bryant initially refuses to believe what he hears and sets off trying to discover who she really was. Before too long he realizes he's a patsy and is embroiled in a plot involving Russian sleeper cells. From that point on there are plenty of plot twists and action to keep the pages turning until the end.

View all my reviews

Review: The Turquoise Lament

The Turquoise Lament by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not the usual salvage job for McGee in this one as he sets about helping the daughter of a dead friend who saved his life once upon a time. Some neat backstory here that tells the tale of the time when McGee and Meyer were chasing after sunken treasure, the time when his life was saved, and it is plopped here, an embedded short story, as Chapter Two. McGee duty bound heads out on a rescue mission that turns into a mystery he has to chase down in the usual McGee way that is equal parts social engineering trickery and brazen thuggery. JDM really gave McGee some fun characters to interact with: a war photographer, a bush pilot flying a home made plane, a crusty manager of a trailer park, and the usual assortment of crooked lawyers and businessmen for McGee to shakedown. The teasing out of the mystery keeps the story moving and entertaining. McGee is back in top form busting chops and taking names. The only disappointment here is that there is not the usual 30-40 page climactic sequence to bring the novel to a smashing conclusion. With this one it is a short and sweet battle that is over surprisingly quickly. And it's no spoiler - six books left in the series, after all - to say that McGee lives to fight another day.

View all my reviews

Review: The Scarlet Ruse

The Scarlet Ruse by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The closer I get to the end of my time rereading John D. MacDonald's novels the more I'm feeling that the Travis McGee series has not held up as well as MacDonald's noir novels. In this the fourteenth in the McGee series we have Trav doing mostly investigative type work, and the only action comes in the final third when we are treated to another of MacDonald's stellar rollercoaster structured climactic sequences. Not a fan of the long anti-climactic summary ending which follows, so let me tell you what I like about this one. The teasing out of a stamp collecting scam; and then learning all about stamp collecting. Watching the Mary Alice character deconstruct before our eyes by what she says and does. Her stinging dialogue is stunning and brilliantly crafted to reveal character. The edginess between Trav and MA, the jousting, whenever they are in a scene together keeps a live current rippling throughout this novel. MacDonald, the old OSS guy, deploys a lot of his spy craft via McGee and it is fascinating anthropology to follow along as McGee navigates back in the day before cell phones and google and the metaverse. Among the thematic highlights are McGee's declining capabilities, his suffering another near-death beating, and McGee once again throwing Meyer into the path of a scythe wielding reaper. These all foreshadow a series working its way to the end.

View all my reviews

Review: The Last One Left

The Last One Left by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Starts really slowly with multiple third person narratives, each with detailed character introductions and much backstory. I stalled out lost after a few chapters and had to restart from the beginning. I have a deep admiration for JDM’s early stand alone novels with their taut linear plots and low word counts. This novel is far more ambitious telling the tale of a complex scheme initiated by the devious and deadly beauty Crissy Harkinson to steal a load of dark money by faking a boating accident. This personally involves Texas lawyer Sam Boylston, an overbearing perfectionist with a marriage on the rocks, and with a kid sister on the missing boat. MacDonald was an exceptional writer and the prose here, albeit a bit wordy for my tastes, is superb. Yeah, the plot is complex and there are probably too many characters but MacDonald deftly ties the multiple narratives into a cohesive and compelling story. It takes a some effort and focus by the reader to get pulled past the slow start but the rewards are substantial. An excellent book that I’m going to dock one half star for the slow start and the excessive verbosity. Four and a half stars.

Review: End of the Tiger and Other Stories

End of the Tiger and Other Stories by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

MacDonald, who published 500 stories and 70+ novels in his career was a master craftsman and this collection of 14 stories and 1 novella shows off his technique quite well. The collection opens with “Hangover”, which was published in 1956, and reads like an episode of Mad Men, as an alcoholic ad executive gets fired for saying the wrong things (namely the truth) to Detroit auto executives at a big rollout meeting. “Blurred View” is a neat noir with an inventive double-cross ending. Same with “The Fast Loose Money,” only with a long simmering revenge twist added in. The plot twist of “Triangle” - a story of a husband trying to hide an affair - is absolutely devilish and MacDonald pulls it off smooth as can be. The novella “The Trap of Solid Gold” was published in 1960 and depicts the now all too familiar story of a young executive forced to live beyond his means to maintain the image - with home, cars, country club memberships, etc. - that the company expects its executives to portray; and the inevitable downfall ensues. Amazing ending sentences, which it will not spoil the story to quote: “Happy endings were reserved for stories for children. An adult concerned himself with feasible endings. And this one was feasible, as an ending or as a beginning. You had to put your own puzzle together, and nobody would ever come along to tell you how well or how poorly you had done.”

View all my reviews

Review: The Long Lavender Look

The Long Lavender Look by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This 12th novel in the Travis McGee series starts not with the beginning of a salvage job, as so many in the series do, but with McGee and Meyer in a car crash, getting shot at, and arrested for murder. So initially the story is about piling it higher and deeper on top of McGee to learn if he can dig fast enough to keep from getting buried in shit. Yes, he can dig fast enough to get out from under one pile and into another where the manure isn't accumulating quite as fast as in the one he'd escaped from. That's our McGee out of jail, but he can't leave the county, so he starts snooping around. The cast of off-the-rails characters grows, as do the complications, as McGee stirs up his own brand of shit while unraveling an almost too complicated whodunit about a years-ago armored car heist. It's a Travis McGee story, so you just knew that there would be a pot of gold out there somewhere for him to chase down. Plenty of action down the home stretch and MacDonald delivers not one but two of his trademark climactic action sequences. Here it's like a rollercoaster with two big humps before the hard brake at the finish. Actually, a great standalone crime/noir. Because it doesn't follow the series M.O., if you'd never read any of the others it doesn't matter. For McGee fans it's another episode. For noobs, it works on its own and maybe draws them into the series. MacDonald firing on all cylinders in this one. My one ding is that at times the narration slips into McGee lecturing himself in third-person, and although I'd agree that narrative move has a certain utility when it comes to characterization, for the most part, McGee talking to himself like that in a first-person POV was annoying. MacDonald also delivers a great metaphor for the mystery McGee is trying to solve: Before Pluto was discovered, the planet was inferred from other observed phenomena - it had to be there - just as the hidden antagonist of this story is waiting to be found and confronted by McGee.

View all my reviews

Review: A Key to the Suite

A Key to the Suite by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first read this book when I was thirteen and clueless about corporate politics and thought it pretty boring compared to the other crime-noir novels I was reading back then. Now, though, after serving time in the corporate world, including having been tasked with some of the same post-merger duties given the novel's protagonist, I found this book absolutely riveting and read it straight through from beginning to end. The plot is a riff on post-merger organizational politics. Floyd Hubbard, corporate hatchet man, is heading to a convention to give a final review of Jesse Mulaney, the soon to be axed head of sales. Mulaney, with the help of his right-hand man, Fred Frick, will not go gentle into the good night and crafts a plan to set up Hubbard and embarrass him at the convention in the hope that this will save Mulaney's job long enough so he can collect his pension. That's the battle drawn and to discover the surprising way it plays out you will just have to read the book yourself. Also on tap, though, is the maturation of Floyd Hubbard into a stone-cold executive. MacDonald also delivers that arc with a nail gun. Another thing that makes this such a great read is the way MacDonald makes full use of the third-person point of view to show this power struggle from all angles; not just from the main characters' point-of-view, but from the minor characters' viewpoints as well. That depth of characterization, combined with an intricate plot filtered through a perspectival point-of-view, should make this a compelling read even if you haven't spent time in the corporate world. MacDonald obviously knew the business world inside and out, however, so if you've been there and done that, this novel rings true.

View all my reviews

Review: Deadly Welcome

Deadly Welcome by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Excellent double-edged plot about a disgraced hometown football hero who returns to his hometown to clandestinely investigate a murder. The beginning is kind of clumsy with page after page of information dump via totally unrealistic dialogue, but eventually Alex Doyle gets on the scene and the story gets into high gear. Plenty of action, but also plenty of exposition via disembodied dialogue. Not screenplay snappy dialogue. Long long paragraphs of summary delivered via speeches without any scene setting or facial expressions or gestures or anything. Even a scene where the characters are swimming and delivering speeches. That pet peeve aside, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. The climactic sequence was done really well and with a lot of pace and that made for a satisfying ending. And despite my bemoaning the exposition via dialogue, MacDonald still delivers plenty of passages like this: "He felt the familiar tensions of the chase, a taste in the back of the throat of a breathless expectancy. It was, in a sense, a dreadful art, this manipulation of human beings. Discover the area of stress. And then nudge so gently and carefully. Back up the lions with a kitchen chair. But it had to be done delicately."

View all my reviews

Review: The Deceivers

The Deceivers by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Carl Garrett's wife Joan goes into the hospital to have ovarian tumors removed and he chooses this time to have an affair with the next door neighbor? Yes, and you know this can't end well. MacDonald is masterful with the character development, the inner turmoil, the sordid details of the affair, and just devastating in how he spins out the consequences. He went maybe a bit overboard in the second quarter of the book with the backstory, but the last half of the novel was riveting.

View all my reviews

Review: Border Town Girl

Border Town Girl by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A collection of two novellas that shows off some of the things MacDonald does best as a writer. With Border Town Girl, a story of a down-on-his-luck ex-jounalist turned novelist who is set up as a drug smuggling mule, the first two chapters are MacDonald at his absolute best: set pieces that establish the plot and reveal character from the inside out, as we see these two characters dealing with their inner demons and then see them left for dead. Linda is a terrific noir plot featuring an "everyman" who falls for a femme fatale and then becomes the victim of her plot to set him up for murder. MacDonald excels at character and Linda is one of the great femme fatale characters in noir.

View all my reviews