Sun 25 Jul 2010
JOHN D. MacDONALD – April Evil. Dell 1st Edition B146; paperback reprint, May 1960. First printing paperback original: Dell 1st Edition 85; 1956. Reprinted later several times by Gold Medal, also in paperback, beginning with d1579, 1965.
A shorter version first appeared in Cosmopolitan (January 1956), back in the days when the magazine actually published stories worth reading. And so did Collier’s, The Saturday Evening Post, and The American Magazine, among others.
These were the magazines my grandparents bought. They lived next door to us, and when I went over to visit, which was often, that’s where and when I got my first exposure to slick literary fiction.
But since they didn’t get Cosmopolitan, I’m sure I missed this one when it first appeared. The earlier Dell printing was a paperback original, but the one I just finished reading is the one with the beautiful Robert McGinnis blonde on the front cover, with lots of leg showing as she’s seen sitting in the open passenger side of an automobile.
And do you know, whenever I’ve looked at the cover, with the blurb “She was beautiful, greedy and ruthless — and more than a match for a killer” I always thought the lady’s name was April. Not so. April is the time of year when a number of nasty elements of crime, passion and (yes) greed come to a nexus all in one spot: Florida, of course, and knowing JDM’s prediction for story settings, it goes almost without saying.
Lenora is beautiful, in an after-thirty on-the-edge sort of way. Blonde, with the sort of trimness in her figure that McGinnis so eloquently suggests. Greedy, yes again. Her soft, useless husband’s uncle is reclusive, extremely wealthy, and a bit of an eccentric, and if it were up to Lennie, the old man would be committed in an instant. Which also makes her ruthless — so the cover’s right. Three for three.
Is she more than a match for a killer? I won’t say, but I’ll let you guess. Lennie is not the only one with an eye for money, and Dr. Tomlin never did believe in banks. Three gangsters and a moll are also in town. MacDonald never uses the word “moll.” It was probably out of fashion even in 1955, but “faithful companion” isn’t quite the right the right phrase to describe Harry Mullin’s friend Sally Leon either.
More. Dr. Tomlin’s home is also now the residence of another distant relative and his wife, who came visiting and have been invited to stay. Hence Lennie’s extreme perturbation.
It is great fun to watch the pieces fall together — and I haven’t mentioned all of them — knowing ahead of time (almost) how they’re going to fit into place. Adding to the pleasure, MacDonald has a very acerbic attitude toward the type of people he dislikes, and even while being subtle, he doesn’t hesitate in letting it show. Flashy guys with only a facade; weaklings who jab around at life and can never deliver a telling blow; women with dreams who take only the easy path.
Who are the heroes in JDM’s world? Men with wives and children they love. Individualistic older men who take a shine to women who need shelter and nurturing. Soft men who show some backbone when it counts, even though it may be too late.
Under MacDonald’s unforgiving eye, the villains almost always get what they deserve, and the good guys? Maybe they do as well. Or maybe not. I’d hate to have you think that JDM’s world one in which everything necessarily comes out even and square and wrapped up nicely in a bow.
July 25th, 2010 at 1:21 am
Steve
This is one of your best reviews. You manage to point out exactly the qualities of MacDonald that made him, and still make him, so compulsively readable. He was often compared to John O’Hara and in some cases I think that was as much a compliment to O’Hara as to JDM.
I’d be interested to see the differences between the COSMOPOLITAN version and the final paperback. In some cases the original magazine appearance was tighter and better constructed, and in others the freedom of the paperback format allowed a writer to develop themes not available to them in the magazine.
I understand why most of the attention goes to the pulps, but there was some really good fiction that came out of the slicks on a regular basis, no small amount of it from this genre and related genres. Many of the major paperback writers had careers in the slicks and the pulps and while the attention always goes to their pulp work that may not be fair. Quite a few of the pulp masters and future paperback kings had success in the slicks, and the list of names appearing there is impressive.
Sadly the size and disposable nature of the slicks can make them difficult to collect, but both the stories and the quality of the illustrations that go with them certainly make them attractive. If there is one area of genre fiction that has been under utilized it is the material appearing in the slicks. Luckily, as with this piece, a lot of it was reprinted elsewhere or adapted and expanded (as this one was), but there is a good deal out there waiting to be rediscovered if some aspiring anthologist would only look.
July 25th, 2010 at 7:17 am
“April Evil” is my favorite JDM novel. I’ve always preferred his non-Travis McGee stories and I rank this one his best. I remember in the beginning when all the crooks are meeting and getting together in the Florida town-it’s a great scene, outstanding & wonderfully written.
July 25th, 2010 at 8:34 am
David points out the importance of slick fiction and I also noticed this and over the years collected many of the best slick magazines such as SATURDAY EVENING POST, COLLIERS, AMERICAN MAGAZINE. I also liked the excellent interior art in these magazines.
However, I’m sorry to say that it is very difficult to collect slicks nowadays because of the almost criminal activities of Breakers. These are the people you often see at flea markets selling excerpted covers and interior art and ads from the slicks. They sometimes frame these covers and ads so that housewives can hang them in their family rooms or kitchens/bathrooms. The husbands especially like the sports and car ads for the den or bar.
I don’t blame non-collectors for buying these excerpted pages but it is inexcusable that the Breakers ruin perfectly good magazines to make a buck. It is getting very difficult to buy slicks that have not been ruined by having pages cut out. You must go through each page counting to make sure that the magazines are complete.
Breakers will even take a fine condition magazine worth $100 and rip it apart because the individual pages will be worth far more. A disgusting and greedy business that only destroys our popular culture and magazine history.
July 25th, 2010 at 11:13 am
I agree with David that this is one of your best reviews; and with August West that this is possibly JDM’s best novel–the Travis McGee series “voice” has NOT held up well*
Which Dell edition has the McGinnis cover, Steve? I think I might like to try to track down a copy of that one. Thanks.
*I think the elements of the McGee books that have dated most annoyingly are the “damaged chicks” — “birds with broken wings” — each seemingly with an overly cute name like Bitsy or Midge.
The criminals’ evil and Travis’ retribution schemes are often dazzlingly worked out. But the man-woman interaction of the McGee books seems so artificial now, in a way his harder edged non-series books do not…
July 25th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Rick
The McGinnis cover is the one at the top of my review. Look for Dell First Edition B146 while on the hunt, or the 1960 printing. I saw a couple of copies offered on Abebooks last night for less than $10, including postage.
You may be able to do better in local shops, if you have any near you. It’s not easy, scouting for a particular book on your own, when there aren’t many stores around any more where you can look.
But it’s appalling how badly described used books are online. I’m talking both condition and bibliographic details, but mostly the former. Books described as new but arriving obviously read more than once? No thanks.
Packaging properly is also hit or miss. Most dealers send out paperbacks, it seems, not all, wrapped in brown paper bags salvaged from supermarkets with no other protection. And they arrive all bumped and bruised. No thanks once again.
As for slick paper magazines, I’d collect them if I had space for them, and over the years I’ve been tempted many times over. I have a few, but not more than a one-foot stack. They take up a lot of room.
And Walker’s right about people who trash them by cutting them up for the ads. I guess people do put them in frames and on their walls, but why? A hideous practice.
Getting back to JDM and Travis McGee, he was getting flak for the overly repetitive themes in them, even at the time. Now that he’s gone, the reputation of the books among mystery fans has gone downhill even more.
But there’s still a shelf of them at the local Borders — well, maybe half a shelf — so they must still be selling.
I’ve not read a Travis McGee in a long time, and I never read all of them when I was reading them, so it’s time I tried another one — just to see what I think about them now.
Rick mentions the “damaged chick” syndrome in the Travis books. True enough! And looking at my review I see that even in APRIL EVIL, I made mention of “Individualistic older men who take a shine to women who need shelter and nurturing.”
I can’t promise you that the latter reflects “birds with broken wings” category — it’s been too long since I wrote it — but even as I was getting the review ready to post, that sentence did catch my eye.
— Steve
July 25th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Thanks for the Dell cover details, Steve.
And to clarify: it isn’t the trope of emotionally shattered and otherwise damaged women that now set my teeth on edge when rereading the Travis books; it’s that McGee’s McLovin’ heals them like the dear-to-god king’s touch in a medieval romance.
I loved the Travis series as I entered my thirties. But now I do prefer JDM’s other novels.
July 25th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
I now find the Travis McGee novels dated but I still like JDM’s other work, including his pulp work. The Rara Avis group is discussing McBain versus JDM, but I’ll take JDM over McBain except for the Travis McGee stuff.
July 25th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
A lot of the problem with McGee depends on whether they are the early middle or later books. I do agree they haven’t aged well, but I think the problem has more to do with too many writers since JDM beating the Florida setting to death with pseudo McGee’s than the original.
i still enjoy the McGee’s and will reread one once in a while, but the stand alones by their very nature probably hold up better as mysteries, suspense, and novels. The stand alones can still surprise you in a way no series can.
Incidentally the ‘bird with a broken wing’ phrase originated with Ian Fleming and Bond (see Kingsley Amis THE JAMES BOND DOSSIER) though it was certainly a recurring theme in JDM (and quite a few other writers of the period). At the time it was actually an improvement over the cruel femme fatale in terms of sexism, but we are probably over sensitive to it now. Blaming a writer for being a product of his own times is always a problem.
I give a lot of leeway to JDM and his women because I’ve known so many that could easily have been the heroines of a McGee or non series novel. True, in real life the redemptive and life changing gift of good sex is seldom — if ever — enough to solve their problems, but the type is true enough. And I think you will find a good many of JDM’s not inconsiderable female fan base still read them, and especially the McGee’s, just for that aspect of the books. That was true of Fleming and Bond too to some extent, and in a reverse way to Dick Francis whose heroes had one wing down.
In one sense we are complaining about one of the factors that propelled them onto the bestseller list and kept them there and why they are still read today.
Granted too, some of the overly cute ‘bunny’ types in JDM may seem a bit trite today, but if you have lived on the Florida, California, or Texas Gulf Coast you will have to admit they are not only true to life, you need only go to the beach to run into dozens of them a day. That one was only observation on JDM’s part, especially for the period he was writing in. Back in the day I even dated some of them.
Maybe it is a southern and western thing, but minus the knightly qualities of JDM’s sexual healers ‘rescuing’ them I’ve known small armies of women who could have walked out of a JDM novel — not always quite as attractive perhaps, but that’s a given for escapist fiction. If I want realism I’ll go outside, but JDM’s women are much closer to reality than most — within the bounds of fiction that is.
July 25th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Well said, David. You’ve summarized my thoughts pretty much completely, except for one thing. I never dated any ‘bunny’ types.
All kidding aside, though, JDM may be paying the price now for going to the well a few times too often when he was writing the McGee’s, which were EXTREMELY popular back then, which considering how much we talk about the Golden Age of Detection on this blog, really wasn’t all that long ago.
Are the women in his books more realistic than the women in the noirish novels of Gil Brewer and Day Keene, say, also published by Gold Medal?
David, you say so, and I’d like to think so too, but I’m talking from the good memories I have of the McGee books, and not from any of them that I’ve read recently.
But of course I know exactly what Rick and Walker are saying, and they’re not the only ones. I was a little surprised to see a small selection of the McGee books at Borders yesterday. There was I think, only one of Ed McBain 87th Precinct books, if that particular comparison means anything.
— Steve
July 25th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
Speaking of John D. MacDonald, take a look at the great website, http://www.thetrapofsolidgold.blogspot.com. It’s full of interesting pieces on JDM.
July 25th, 2010 at 7:00 pm
Steve
Within the bounds of remembering this is fiction and not fact the JDM heroines are more realistic, at least to the regions he was writing about. At least I have known more of them.
Now, let me categorize this, spending time on the coasts I did date a lot of bunnies, I also — for reasons I won’t go into — dated a good many models, dancers, and beauty contestants (and married two of them) and had no small number in my family (including my mother, a Neiman Marcus model) so I can testify to the reality of many of JDM’s (and even some of James Bond’s) women (again, within those bounds of fiction). JDM and Fleming may have glamorized and simplified their types, but they were drawing on observation from life in many cases.
I can’t speak for JDM, but Lady Ann Fleming, Ian Fleming’s wife, (the title wasn’t from him) ‘was’ a Bond girl — making Fleming co-respondent in one of the most notorious divorces in Post War England.
No, never met any femme fatales — worse the luck — or maybe better.
That said, fiction, of course, simplifies things and tends more to two than three dimensions — but from observation JDM was more three dimensional than most.
And quite a few of the real ones I’ve known would have told you they would have killed to meet a McGee and experience healing sex. As you might notice in JDM’s novels they aren’t exactly shy about saying what they think and feel. That’s pretty real too.
Even some of the more exotic ones aren’t that far off the mark. The ‘big creamy bitch’ whose death sets off the events in A PURPLE PLACE FOR DYING could have been any of a dozen women I knew married to wealthy oilmen, including one who liked to wear a racoon baculum with a diamond in the tip (and loved to tell how she embarrassed the heck out of Frank Sinatra at a cocktail party when he didn’t know what a baculum was).
Now I can’t say about Goodis, Brewer, or Keene for the simple reason that so far I haven’t hit that low of a low. From the days when I worked for Pinkerton’s I would assume some of their women were pretty close to reality too though (far less attractive but you see them on the news every night — usually after some has been shot) — again with the caution that fiction — especially genre fiction — deals in ‘types’ more than people.
But I can testify from childhood I have been surrounded by JDM type women — lucky dog — and he is only exaggerating a little. Unluckily for them they didn’t seem to meet many Travis McGee types though.
July 25th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
That last line made me smile, David.
July 25th, 2010 at 7:25 pm
Walker,
Thank you, I think, for pointing the way to that JDM blog. I spend too much time at the computer as it is, and here’s yet another way to spend a whole lot more!
If you’re a JDM fan of any kind, from what I’ve seen so far (the first page), you do have to take a look.
— Steve
July 25th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
Walker
I’ll second that thanks for the link. All I need, another place to waste time — but I love it.
July 25th, 2010 at 11:10 pm
Somehow we all forgot but JDM would have been 94 on July 24. Happy belated birthday to one of our favorite writers of pulp and crime stories.
July 26th, 2010 at 12:22 am
Walker
You are right. Hadn’t thought of that, though by now we would likely be up to colors like mauve and fuchsia — THE FANCY FUCHSIA FAREWELL and THE EAGER ECRU EGRESS — egad!
July 26th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
Coming to the party late. I loved the McGees and read them all, though i came to them late – 1970s – when half were already written. Back in the late 90s i reread them in order of publication. I enjoyed them all again, but what i found the most interesting was the books I recalled the most fondly were not the books i enjoyed the most during my re-read.
Regarding the sexism and “healing with sex” that ya’ll have discussed, I just accept it as a part of the period of the books and know going in that it will be there. Then, there’s no problem.
Travis McGee has to go down as one of the all time great character creations, and the series as one of the best. I agree with previous comments that many of JDM’s stand along titles hold up better. While April Evil is a good one, my faves are THE EMPTY TRAP, SOFT TOUCH, AREA OF SUSPICION, ON THE RUN, A BULLET FOR CINDERELLA, and DEAD LOW TIDE.
I have a hand full of others to read, but am having trouble starting any because of the small font size. Guess i need to search out some HBs, if any exist. I imagine most of those books were PBOs.
July 26th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Ive always thought that the difference between JDM (and Ian Fleming and Peter Cheyney to some extent) is that their books are far more novels than genre novels. They develop — formula or not — on novelistic lines rather than those of mystery and suspense per se. In Fleming’s and JDM’s cases that is deliberate — it may be an accident or incompetence with Cheyney — but though they primarily write genre fiction they don’t approach it as genre fiction.
They aren’t alone in that. Many of Somerset Maugham’s books only miss being genre fiction because they were written as novels, the same for Simon Raven, Graham Greene, Hugh Walpole, Daphne Du Maurier, Robert Goddard, Winston Graham, C.S. Forester, and even a few by Joseph Conrad (I’m comparing style not quality).
But I do think it is only fair to JDM or Fleming (Fleming was a huge fan of JDM’s) and to some extent Raymond Chandler, to point out that their approach and their goal was not the same as many of the genre writers they are compared to. They didn’t give a fig for writing a standard suspense or mystery novel.
And I will also point out that JDM, Fleming, and Cheyney are all three writers who had far more female fans than most genre writers in their primarily male oriented niches. That is likely due to two things — women liked the ‘sexist’ elements in their books, the somewhat more fully drawn (if stereotyped) female characters, and the romantic even Byronic leads (Ayn Rand particularly wrote about the Byronic qualities of Bond and women love her extremely romantic, sexist, and ‘rape fantasy’ ridden novels — and I can defend that last one with examples from Rand’s novels at least one of them filmed).
It always amuses me to hear a bunch of guys talking about how sexist JDM and Fleming are when both they and Cheyney were heavily read by women who didn’t normally like or read genre fiction (my mother hated mysteries — even Gothics — but read all my Fleming, Cheyney, and MacDonald novels). I think many readers were looking for something other than what many of us expect of a genre novel when they read these writers — which also explains why some times genre fans turn against them.
JDM did write some fine mystery and suspense fiction, but I would argue both his interests and style were aimed at something different.
But it is ironic this primarily male conversation had dwelt so much on JDM’s sexism — when he was and is read by far more female readers than almost any other writer of his type we discuss on these pages.