JOHN D. MacDONALD – Deadly Welcome. Dell First Edition B127, paperback original; 1st printing, March 1959. Cover art by Bob McGinnis. Reprinted several times in paperback over the years, eventually by Gold Medal.

   Alexander Doyle is a wanted man. Wanted by the Pentagon to have him transferred from the State Department to do a special assignment for them. It seems that an officer with considerable talents and abilities has had a heart attack, but while recuperating, his wife was murdered, and even though his sister is nursing him now, he feels unable (or is simply unwilling) to come back to work.

   Doyle’s job. Find the killer of Colonel M’Gann’s wife.

   What the Pentagon knows is that Doyle comes from the same small town in Florida, the kind of place that’s wary of strangers, but they believe that Doyle can easily be accepted by the locals, where others would not. What the Pentagon seems not to know is that Doyle left town under a black cloud, accused of a robbery he did not commit, but by agreeing to leave and join the army, everything would be hushed up.

   What the Pentagon definitely does not know is that Doyle had a one-night fling with the dead woman. What Doyle does not know is that the dead woman’s younger sister is all grown up now, and that she has had a crush on him ever since high school.

   Can he go home again? That’s the question. He agrees, but with a pain of reluctance in his gut. Mix in a passel of townsfolk who can’t stop talking as well as a self-important deputy sheriff who is a whiz with a nightstick, and you have the mixings of a story you won’t stop reading once started until you’re done.

   The detective aspect of things is minor. It’s the people who matter in JDM’s story, and the sense of memories that always come back whenever you or someone tries to go home again. That’s the essence of this book, and (I have to mention this) the fact that the dead woman’s sister, the victim of an attempted rape a few years bfore, is someone who needs the same kind of TLC that JDM’s later hero protagonist became famous for — by extending it to the wounded women who came into his life.