Sat 6 Aug 2016
Reviewed by Barry Gardner: GEOFFREY NORMAN – Blue Chipper.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[3] Comments
GEOFFREY NORMAN – Blue Chipper. Morgan Hunt #2. Morrow, hardcover, 1992. Avon, paperback, 1994.
Let’s get one thing out of the way. The publicity material describes Norman as “…a worthy successor to John D. MacDonald.” Not. Norman is a competent writer, but light-years away from MacDonald in both depth and style. Nor, as intimated, is Morgan Hunt a reincarnation of Travis McGee. None of which is to say, mind you, that this isn’t a good book, and Hunt not an engaging character.
Hunt is an ex-con, now pardoned, who made a pot of money playing the commodities market while in jail. A licensed private investigator, he works occasionally for a Pensacola lawyer, more for something to do than anything else. In Chipper, a black friend who is a sheriff’s deputy asks his help. A young black who has no redeeming qualities has been arrested for a drug-related murder; no problem there. The problem is that his brother is the best basketball player ever to come out of Florida, and that within an hour of the arrest a white man shows up at their mother’s house offering to get the murder charge reduced — if the basketball star will sign with the state university.
Hunt calls his lawyer friend (who has represented the miscreant before, and they begin a chase which leads them deep into the world of major college athletics.
I enjoyed the book, as I did the first Hunt opus, Sweetwater Ranch. Norman writes in a spare, lean style with a lot of well-done dialogue, and has a feel for the look and smells of the Florida Panhandle. His characters are well realized and appealing, particularly Hunt’s lady, the Cajun Jessie Beaudreaux. Hunt himself is laconically competent, and overly given to introspection.
My only cavil was with the plot. I am quite cognizant of and devoutly opposed to the hypocrisy and avarice with which major college athletics are saturated, but I think Norman may have made it all a little too evil — assuming that’s possible.
Bibliographic Note: There were only two more books in the Morgan Hunt series: Deep End (1994) and Blue Light (1995).
August 6th, 2016 at 11:53 pm
I read and enjoyed SWEETWATER RANCH, but not enough that I actively sought out more of them. I would read one if it was available or pick one up if I saw it in a bookstore, but I wasn’t overly impressed by the rather second hand Travis McGeeisms.
As too many have found merely setting a book in Florida with a footloose tough but introspective hero does not make you MacDonald or your hero McGee. Imitating MacDonald’s tropes is easier than his voice.
August 7th, 2016 at 9:49 am
I wonder how much effort Norman himself put into making himself the next JDM, or if that was a decision made by the publisher’s publicity department.
Either way, it didn’t work, and Morgan Hunt disappeared rather quickly. I didn’t read the first one, but this second one I did. It’s faded enough from memory that it took Barry’s review to bring back anything other than it was about basketball.
August 10th, 2016 at 6:54 am
I liked these more than you or Barry did, as I remember it, mainly for the (then) unusual Florida panhandle setting rather than the more common locations of MacDonald and others. I read the first three in June of 1994 but somehow I missed book four. I might try and track it down.