John D. MacDonald at work.
When I was an unpublished young writer searching for authors to read I stumbled upon John D. MacDonald. Nobody told me about him. I discovered him in a second-hand bookstore buried in the paperback racks. Just discovered him. It was like finding a gold nugget. Back in the early seventies, MacDonald was still being published in paperback originals, so his books were rarely in the Seattle Public Library system, which I haunted, and which in those days catered primarily to hardcover fiction.
I also haunted a used bookstore in the building above what used to be Woolworth’s dime store in downtown Seattle. You had to walk up a set of creaky stairs and check your bags with the clerk. I always had a large satchel which I then filled up with books, most of them paperbacks. I think Nightmare in Pink was the first MacDonald book I picked up. Wow! I knew right away I had to read everything he wrote. And I did, finding most of the titles over a period of several years in that same musty bookstore.
MacDonald had two things going for him. The first was he told a riproaring yarn. The second was he told it with verve. Here was a writer who wrote accessible prose you didn’t have to wade through, yet it was lyrical. He was keenly in touch with all the senses and used color to good affect. Each of his Travis McGee series titles—his best books, I believe—has a color in the title: The Deep Blue Good-bye, Cinnamon Skin, The Quick Red Fox. His descriptions were evocative and sensual. Read the rest of this entry »
