Three by John D. MacDonald:
A KEY TO THE SUITE (1962): I mentioned this before, it's the
roof-off look at a business convention where a man's job is
on the line. Good stuff, solid crisp JDM work.
DEATH TRAP (1957): An engineer goes back to see a girl he'd
done wrong when he reads her genius brother is about to be
executed for murder, sets out to clear him, and stirs up a
lot of trouble. This one isn't up to JDM's usual standards.
There are some unlikely plot turns, a strange bunch of sex-
and drug-crazed teenagers, a lot of pop Freudianism, and a
sadistic sheriff.
A DEADLY SHADE OF GOLD (1965): The fifth McGee book, and it's
a double-length Gold Medal. Frankly, it'd have been better if
it was regular length. McGee has more time to muse about
women, men, society, and all that, which I certainly don't
mind, but the plot ends up being very confusing, moving from
an old friend who was involved with some little gold statues
to a Mexican resort to anti-Castro Cubans to debauched
Hollywood types. I couldn't keep any of it straight by the
end. McGee sleeps with four women, is turned down by one, and
sees one who could have been his true love be killed in an
explosion. Near the end he's knocked on the head, but an hour
later he can still carry 300 pounds of stuff although there's
a bullet in his side. He's tough.
Two by Mr. Pelecanos:
A FIRING OFFENSE (1992): His first, and the first of the
three Nick Stefanos books. It's interesting reading these
after the later books and seeing how Nick's life ties in to
SHAME THE DEVIL and the others. Mr. Pelecanos is getting
better and better, of course, but that's not to say this
isn't good.
THE BIG BLOWDOWN (1996): I'd never seen this in a store
before, but one day there it was. This is the one about Big
Nick Stefanos, the other Nick's grandfather; Pete Karras,
Dimitri's father; and a lot of other people in Washington
before and after WWII. The only thing I didn't like about it
is due to personal taste: I'm not a fan of the use of small
chunks of narrative sets years in the past to set up the
later events. I like things more continuous. That didn't mean
I didn't like the book, though, because it's great. I was
delighted by the use of contemporary music and movie
references. Mr. Pelecanos uses them in all his books, of
course, but I hadn't expected a white guy being put hip to
Fletcher Henderson or someone being compared to Laird Cregar.
The scope of all these Washington books is really something.
It's a top-notch body of work.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 15 Sep 2001 EDT