Sat 4 Mar 2023
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.
March 4th, 2023 at 2:22 am
No one did the return of the hero better than JDM, perhaps because he understood the classical underpinnings of the theme. He could take the simplest of plots, add a few well drawn characters, stir with suspense that rises from character and not contrivance, and not only keep the reader turning pages, but fully engaged in the same way as a great novelist.
Even with his acclaim he still is underappreciated for a level of skill and sophistication he brought to the genre.
March 4th, 2023 at 12:33 pm
In terms of his standalones such as this one, MacDonald was a novelist first and a mystery writer only secondarily. He made his success with the Travis McGee books, but in my opinion he really shone with his non-series books.
March 4th, 2023 at 8:25 am
I read all those Gold Medal JDM novels back in the 1960s. Which is starting to be a long time ago. You remind me I gotta get back that way someday soon!
March 4th, 2023 at 12:20 pm
Just doing my job here, Dan!
March 4th, 2023 at 2:45 pm
#3 on Ed gormans list of Macdonald standalones. https://mysteryscenemag.com/blog-article/3389-my-10-favorite-john-d-macdonald-standalone-novels
March 4th, 2023 at 2:49 pm
Thanks for the link, Tony. Ed really had the knack of summing up a book in just a single paragraph. I don’t think he’d mind at all my posting it here:
DEADLY WELCOME
“While not as ambitious as some of his other books, Deadly Welcome is a violent and melancholy trip back in time. A State Department employee named Alex Doyle is ordered to go to a small town and convince a troubled scientist who can’t get over his wife’s murder to return to DC and his work on a secret project. The problem being that this is the town where Doyle grew up living in a shantytown. He returns reluctantly, with a grudge, looking for a killer and a way to purge himself of his rage. Not all JDM fans like this novel but I’ve read it three or four times and enjoyed it every trip out.”
March 4th, 2023 at 5:56 pm
It’s interesting it borders on the espionage genre.
March 4th, 2023 at 8:47 pm
Very tangentially, I’m afraid. Alex is assigned to the case by people at the Pentagon who would like the colonel back in action as soon as possible, but once Alex reaches his old home town, it all becomes personal to him. Almost nothing about what the colonel does or knows comes up, even after he meets him and tries to find out what it would take to have him come back to work.
March 4th, 2023 at 10:03 pm
JDM had written some espionage stories for the slicks, and a few of his books like MURDER IN THE WIND involve intelligence types though not in spy stories.
March 7th, 2023 at 8:20 am
Here Mr. Masteller discovered a MacDonald spy who appeared in stories:: https://spyguysandgals.com/sgShowChar.aspx?id=2673
March 7th, 2023 at 1:29 pm
Thanks for the link, Johny. It’s quite a write-up for a series that consists of only two short stories or novelettes, and after reading it, I’d really like to read both of them. Unfortunately, unless they’re online somewhere, who’d like to pay what you’d have to to obtain the two issues of DOC SAVAGE magazine they’re in? Probably not me.
March 7th, 2023 at 1:38 pm
Johny’s link has this JDM admission: “I’m never going to start another series. They are limiting and I hate them.”
Ed Gorman tried to get JDM to admit as much in a later interview and JDM steadfastly refused.
EG: Do you find a series character confining?
JDM: I do not find a series character confining. I do other kinds of books in between the McGee books. First-person fiction is restrictive only in that you can’t cheat. The viewpoint must be maintained with flawless precision. You can’t get into anyone else’s head. The whole world is colored by the prejudices and ignorances of your hero.
https://mysteryfile.com/JDM/Interview.html