Summer means time move a little slower, indulge in good books. Last couple of days I’ve gone back to an old favorite, John D. MacDonald and his Travis McGee novels. I’m nearly done with Bright Orange for the Shroud, published in 1965. It’s both timeless and of its time, as good writing is. McGee, the Florida boat bum, sets out to recover money swindled from a hapless friend. Soon he’s running a con of his own, up against big-money flim-flam artists and swamp-rat thugs. This book is an early one (the sixth, following four McGee novels published in 1964 as MacDonald cranked out paperbacks), a bit less polished than the later stuff but its rawness shows what JDM did best. Listen to this description of a very lethal bad guy named Boone Waxwell:
Then the door opened and a man came out onto the porch. He wore dirty khaki pants. He was barefoot, bare to the waist. Glossy black curly hair, dense black mat of hair on his chest. Blue eyes. Sallow face. Tattoo as Arthur had described it. But Arthur’s description hadn’t caught the essence of the man. … Waxwell had good wads of muscles on his shoulders. His waist had thickened and was beginning to soften. In posture, expression, impact, had had that stud look, that curiously theatrical blend of brutality and irony. Bogart, Mitchum, Gable, Flynn–the same flavor was there, a seedy, indolent brutality, a wisdom of the flesh.
JDM coupled this gift for physical description with the rest of the character as well. There are places where the books are dated, sometimes endearingly (McGee on the foredeck of his boat, smoking his pipe), sometimes in ways that make you wince (the sexist portrayal of some women in the books). But I never tire of MacDonald’s work; picking it up, reading that first page, is like hearing the first riff of a favorite song; makes you smile, want to crank it way up.
If you haven’t read John D. MacDonald, give him a try. Many of us writers in this genre owe him bigtime.
In PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN, the first Brandon Blake novel, Brandon gets a full dose of bad guys. A brawl in a funeral home introduces him to Joel Fuller, a sociopathic hustler. Fuller is fresh out of jail and determined to take Brandon out—after Fuller and his sidekick Kelvin shake him down.
Rocky isn’t a tough guy. He’s a skinny little kid with crooked glasses, and he shouldn’t be homeless in Portland, Maine. When McMorrow and Roxanne pluck him from under the stomping feet of a gang of street kids, Rocky latches onto McMorrow–and drags him into a world of murder, both old and new. Why is McMorrow protecting Rocky? The cops want to know. Why is Rocky on the run? McMorrow wants to know. Why does death follow in Rocky’s wake? Jack and Roxanne need to find out before they’re added to the list. 
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