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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When I was an unpublished young writer  searching for authors to read I stumbled upon John D. MacDonald.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. His stories moved quickly and always involved some urgent terror bearing down on the protagonist. He started off writing noir but then later in his career segued into the big novel, (Condominium) aiming for the bestseller lists. I thought the last move was a mistake and always wanted more Travis McGee books, but I’m sure he needed to pay the bills just like the rest of us.

 

 

MacDonald died a year after I published my first book, also a paperback original, so I never got to meet him. I’m not sure what he would have thought of the Mystery-Bookstore-meet-and-greet-your-readers author phenomenon that burgeoned in the late eighties and all through the nineties and is now reluctantly dying off in most places. From all accounts he was a shy man but oh how I would have liked to meet him.

Because I’m in the same business, I’ve heard a couple of stories about him from supposedly unimpeachable sources. These stories may be apocryphal, so approach with caution. Somebody who was there that night told me that when he went to New York City to pick up his Edgar Award at the Edgar banquet he was visibly nervous about speaking in front of people, so nervous that some bystanders were worried for him. I like that. I was nervous when I was nominated for an Edgar. There’s nothing about spending your days alone with a keyboard that prepares you for public speaking; never has been, never will be.

MacDonald slaved away in the trenches for years, writing quickly and well, for he needed those checks. They couldn’t have been large so he had to keep them frequent. The story goes that somebody at The New York Times said once he was good enough to hit their bestseller lists. An argument ensued, since MacDonald was thought of as a genre writer. A bet was made. If they splashed him across the face of the book review section, he would become a mega-seller. He was splashed. He sold. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it is true that in his later years he did make the bestseller lists with hardcovers. What a joy that must have been for him after all those years of private toil and small remittances.

One thing I’ve always loved and admired in John D. MacDonald was his respect for language and getting the words right. Few writers had bigger toolboxes or loved colorful language more than MacDonald.

I can’t think of another writer of whom it can be said I’ve read all of his books at least twice, and some more than that. Perhaps Mark Twain. Certainly, if there is another writer in that category, they were never as prolific as John D. MacDonald.

There’s a wonderful website devoted to MacDonald and MacDonald trivia here.

You can shop for John D.’s books here at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop.