*The End of the Night,* Fawcett Gold Medal. 1960 is one of
JDM's non-McGees.
The novel, about what JDM calls "The Wolfpack Murders." is
about "Three men and a beautiful girl on a cross-country
terror spredd--a coast-to-coast rampage of stealing,
kidnapping, rape and killing." (So says the back cover)
The book begins with no surprises begins with a letter from
one of the executioners describing the execution of the four
"rampagers."
What follows is alternate point of view incidents leaing up
to the actual capture of the four. Each point of view is
written in a different voice, but as always, McGee imposes
his own brand of poetic prose on each character.
Which is the problem I had with the book. The most focused
characters are one member of "the wolf pack," a drop out from
college just a few weeks before graduation; the other is the
group's last victim, a well-to-do young lady who who is about
to get married but who is in the wrong place at the wrong
time.
One gets the feeling that JDM in this one, was writing for
the ages and didn't quite hit the mark.
JDM attempts to create an atmosphere where a bright college
drop-out could manage to join up with and participate in
spree killing. He tries to show his gradual loss of
conscience. In some ways he succeeds, in others he
fails.
The book is noir with homage, I think, to William Faulkner.
It's a good read that in the beginning had me reassessing JDM
and putting him back with the Chandler and Hammett, but JDM
did not follow through.
All opinion of course.
I am now going to read *Dead Low Tide,* which many of you
have recommended.
Jack Bludis
===== http://JackBludis.com
-- # 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 : 20 Jun 2003 EDT