The Deep Blue Good-by by John D. MacDonald

Wow, did this book surprise me. I picked it up in my little town's only book source (except for Wal-Mart), which is a combination used book store and junk shop. It's the kind of place that smells like rotting paper in a damp garage. Everything is covered in dust and you can hardly move around. You hardly expect to find much of value there. In amongst literally thousands of romance novels and suchlike I spotted this, and since I remembered reading good things somewhere about MacDonald and his Travis McGee series, I gave it a chance, especially since it only cost 60 cents.

What a bargain! I have spent double-digit dollars on "literary" novels that were not half as fun to read and not as well written. Seriously.

MacDonald follows somewhat in the noir footsteps of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. His Travis McGee is not as smart talking and cynical as their heroes, but we have the same proliferation of sexually available females and the same looming darkness from the underbelly of civilization. This novel, the first of the 21-book series, is not really even a mystery, since the bad guy is known from the first. But what a villain he is--much creepier to me than any of Hammett's or Chandler's, because he is not an underworld figure such as I am never likely to come into contact with, but a psychopathic rapist and sadist who is seemingly charming on the outside, such as anyone might meet anywhere and never know it until it was too late. About the villain, Travis McGee says, "...evil, undiluted by any childhood trauma, does exist in the world, exists for its own precious sake, the pustular bequest from the beast...."

In between tracking down the bad guy, rescuing ladies in distress, and participating in some well-described violent fist fights (which he doesn't always win), Trav (as his friends call him) indulges in rants about such things as the uglification of Florida and the false promises of the American dream, in descriptive language that is immediate, concrete, and arresting.

Since finishing this book, I have read up on John D. MacDonald and have learned that through the course of this series his hero develops as a character and that the books also interestingly reflect societal changes. I won't jump right in to a marathon 21-book read, but I do plan to read others in the series, in order.

Recommended for all readers, not just for those who like detective stories.