JOHN D. MacDONALD – Free Fall in Crimson. Travis McGee #19. Harper & Row, hardcover, 1981. Fawcett, paperback, 1982. Reprinted a number of times since.
I’ve been doing some research. The first Travis McGee story was entitled The Deep Blue Goodbye, and it was published first as a paperback in May of 1964, back when a book sold in softcover would set you back all of forty cents or so.
It’s now exactly seventeen years, eighteen books, and an equal number of colors later [1981], and real money, the folding kind, is going to be what it takes to get your hands on a copy of the latest in the series. [$10.95] No more loose pocket change!
This negative sort of progress notwithstanding, what this does is to illustrate one of the most remarkable aspects of John D. MacDonald’s long writing career. Ignored by the critics until just recently, he began in the late 1940’s writing hundreds of stories published in the pulp magazines {and mostly still buried there). In the 1950’s, with the demise of the pulps at hand, he switched to novels, with a list of them fully a page long, but all of them in paperback and in paperback only.
Only in the last five or ten years has it been that his books have come out first in hardcover, and now when they do, they head straight for the bestseller list. Readers have known all along. They’ve known that MacDonald’s name on a story has meant just what they’ve been looking for.
Today, of course, MacDonald is best known for his adventures of Travis McGee. Other than myriads of articles for TV Guide and blurbs for the dust jackets for the books of other authors, he seems to be writing nothing else. It seems a little strange for those of us who’ve been with him all the while, but apparently McGee is enough to keep the demands of the vast majority of his legions of fans satisfied.
The format is restricting, but given the continued storytelling drive of a Free Fall in Crimson, plus the usual amount of free-wheeling MacDonald-ian philosophy thrown in for good measure, it seems unlikely that any change is due in the near future.
In the opening chapters, McGee is still mourning the loss of Gretel, lost but then avenged when last we met him, in The Green Ripper. He is doing a lot of thinking about “destiny,” and not until this new case comes along does he extricate himself from the deep, self-induced funk he’s dug himself into.
He is asked to investigate, long after the fact, the strange death of an artist’s estranged father. The man was dying of cancer, but perhaps not fast enough, for before he does, he is beaten to death by persons unknown in an isolated wayside rest area. His heir is his wife, from whom he was legally separated. Her current boyfriend specializes in making R-rated biker movies, but his latest films have not been faring well.
McGee’s solution, when it comes to it, as it always does, is to give fate a handy shove in the right direction. Fate’s response, as is usual in JDM’s books, is tough and uncaring. Unfortunately, McGee neglects some loose ends this time, and as a result, in the next book it will be his best friend, Meyer, who will need some rehabilitating.
In the Travis McGee universe, it is not wise to stand too close to the target area.
Rating: A minus.
— Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier, July/August 1981.
711 OCEAN DRIVE. Columbia Pictures, 1950. Edmond O’Brien Edmond O’Brien, Joanne Dru, Otto Kruger, Barry Kelly. Director: Joseph M. Newman
Edmond O’Brien stars in this remarkably average crime drama about the bookmaking racket. He portrays Mal Granger, a telephone company technician who works his way up in the criminal world, eventually becoming a top Syndicate figure on the West Coast. Along the way, he has a rival murdered, steals the rival’s girl (Joanne Dru), and then proceeds to knock off the hitman who he hired in the first place. All the while trying to outwit the Syndicate’s Cleveland-based boss (Otto Kruger).
Tough stuff, with O’Brien giving a solid performance as a man whose heart is increasingly hardened by his chosen line of work. Unfortunately, it takes a long time for the movie to get going. The first half hour or so, especially, is a drag. Too much time is spent on Granger’s ability to rig a telephone system for a low-level bookie, one that would allow said bookie to get near instantaneous results from the track.
This might have been interesting in 1950 – and I say might – but it is a drag now. The movie does perk up in the second and third acts, with the film culminating in a well executed and photographed chase and fight sequence set in and around the Hoover Dam in Nevada.
Overall, 711 Ocean Drive is, as I said previously, average. I just don’t know what the title refers to! It’s never mentioned in the film (as far as I could tell) and it doesn’t seem to indicate anything special, other than possibly Granger’s fictional Malibu address once he becomes a big shot.
WILLIAM FULLER – Back Country. Dell First Edition #8, paperback, 1954. Stark House Press, 2022 (Black Gat #36).
William Fuller, according to his publishers, was a merchant seaman, a hobo, a veteran of World War II, and a bit player in western movies. He also wrote seven novels about Brad Dolan, a big, tough drifter who travels around the south getting in and out of trouble.
In Back Country, the first book in the series, Dolan’s car breaks down in Cartersville, a small town in central Florida. Many similar small towns turned up in the paperback originals of the 1950s, and Cartersville is filled with all the characters we love to hate — the Boss who runs the county and believes that “nigras” are all right if they slay in their place; the cruel, corrupt, pot-gutted lawmen; the redneck town bigots.
Dolan enters this environment and makes all the wrong moves: He wins at gambling, insults the sheriff, makes time with the big Boss’s wife. Naturally, he gets beaten and thrown in jail, but that doesn’t stop him. He not only sleeps with the Boss’s wife, he sleeps with the Boss’s daughter. Then the wife is found in Dolan’s room with her throat cut, just as the town’s racial tension reaches a crisis.
These ingredients may sound familiar, but Fuller mixes them expertly, keeping the pace fast and the characters believable. Dolan’s toughness (and his realization that he’s not quite as hard-boiled as he thinks) is convincingly handled. There’s a spectacularly vivid cockfighting sequence, and the setting is at times drawn with telling realism.
Also recommended in the Brad Dolan series: Goat Island (1954) and The Girl in the Frame (1957).
Well,almost. I’m hoping to be able to post something a lot more substantial later this evening, but in case I’m not, I thought a short message such as this might allay any concerns on the part of any of you who have been wondering where the hell I’ve wandered off to.
Or maybe you’ve never noticed. So be it. But you can blame it on a weird confluence of medical appointments and a balky boiler in the basement of this house which uses it for hot water, including most especially for heat in the overnight. (Spring is still only in its wistful wishful days here in CT.)
In any case, all is as well here as it can be, and even if slowly, I shall be back in business soon. Those awaiting replies to emails, I will work on those accordingly as well. I promise!
