SUMMARIES AND REVIEWS OF JDM NOVELS
What follows on the next several pages is a look at the books, in alphabetical order, with the “blurb” from the back cover of each book. In a few cases I have added a somewhat critical and philosophical overview of the novel.
These reviews are being done as the spirit moves me, but it will be completed at some point.
Since one problem is not revealing the "ending" of a book I have chosen to comment on the skeleton of the plot and the impact of the book as a whole to me. I am on my 6th or 7th re-reading of most of the books, a process covering much of the past 40 years.
If you've read a particular book and want to share some thoughts just email me at
I’ve heard from D.R. Martin, who is more than an avid reader, and who has a blog devoted to discussing the McGee novels. Go to this site for more information:
http://drmar120.wordpress.com/say-hello-to-travis-mcgee/
Fawcett: 1954
SHE WOULD HAUNT ME FOREVER. . .
She had taken all I had - using the weapons of her money and her
demanding hunger for a new man to make me into something less than
a man. She had condemned everybody who had loved her to a lifetime
of shame and self-hatred.
But someone stronger than I had turned on her, killed her, and
thrown that tantalizing body into the cold lake.
And now all of us were free at last . . . or were we?
Dell: 1956
THE STAGE WAS SET Harry Mullin hit town first. Harry had
just made the F.B.I.'s Ten Most Wanted list, and he was a
little nervous about being seen With him at the rented
house from which they planned to case the job.
With him was a girl named Sal, who had fallen into the
easy sluttish rut of being a good woman to a bad man . . .
Then Ace turned up. The Ace had been very good in his
day, but he was going a little to flab, and maybe he
had lost something in the guts department . . .
The last one into town was Ronnie. Ronnie had killed
twelve men and two women in the past seven years,
and had gotten to like his job - maybe a little too much .
Dell: 1954
My brother's wife.
Weaver of black magic stained with blood.
Temptress who haunted my restless nights.
Wife gloriously beautiful in her widow's weeds.
Woman I still wanted with the craving of the damned.
Hodder and Stoughton: 1986
There are two kinds of men in Mississippi. The make natural
enemies. And sometimes, but only if the balance between strength
and weakness tips too far, unnatural allies.
Tucker Loomis is a hard and dangerous man with a ruthlessness all
West Bay fears and respects, and an improbable amount of money.
Wade Rowley is a common man who aspires to honor but gets caught
up in the footwork of a skilled swindler.
In a pitiless game with a few harsh rules and just one way of
keeping score, the wrong man will die and another will get away
with more than murder.
First published 1959 Fawcett
SURE, LEO RICE WAS A NICE GUY . . .
But why did he choose our beach? He could have gone ten miles up
the strip and all of us could have lived happily ever after - with
no questions asked.
1956 by Popular Library: 1965
TWO HEADLONG TALES OF INTRIGUE, SUSPENSE, AND MURDER
BY A MASTER STORYTELLER:
BORDER TOWN GIRL
Once, Lane Sanson had been a Somebody - a war correspondent and a
best-selling author. Now he was a nobody, bumming around Mexico.
Lost, lonely, hungry for hope, he was a pushover for a border town
B-girl - the perfect fall guy for a lethal frame-up.
LINDA
She was born with the morality gene missing. As beautiful, as
inviting, as treacherous as the sea around her, Linda is one of
the most compelling women yet created by John D. MacDonald.
FAWCETT: 1950
Take a hard-boiled ex-cop named Cliff Bartells.
Take a beautiful girl with the unlikely name of Melody Chance.
Take the death of of one Elizabeth Stegman of Boston,
Massachusetts.
Take her missing jewels insured for seven hundred and fifty
thousand dollars.
Add them all up and what have you got? Murder for profit. Cold
blooded, premeditated murder . . .
Dell: 1955
HER VENEER WAS BIG CITY . . .
But one look and you knew that Toni Raselle's instincts were
straight out of the river shack she came from.
I watched her as she toyed with the man, laughing, her tumbled
hair like raw blue-black silk, her brown shoulders bare. Eyes
deep-set, a girl with a gypsy look.
So this was the girl I had risked my life to find. This was the
girl who was going to lead me to a buried fortune in stolen loot.
Fawcett: 1958
She was very young. She was dangerous.
She was a girl who lived too close to the edge of violence.
She hunted trouble. She was an exhibitionist, a body-worshipper, a
sensualist.
She was without morals, scruples, ethics. She was beautiful.
She was CLEMMIE . . .
Appleton-Century Crofts: 1953
FOR FIFTEEN YEARS THEY HAD BEEN MARRIED.
Fletcher and Jane Wyant. They had built a perfect marriage - -two wonderful kids,
a beautiful home, their own private never-ending love affair.
Fletcher thought he knew Jane completely. No dark secrets. No
hidden past.
Then one hot summer week everything changed. And suddenly,
brutally, Jane became a cold stranger.
CANCEL ALL OUR VOWS is a vivid, shocking novel of lawless love and
shattering desires - -desires that bring men and women to the
brink of disaster.
Lippencott: 1977
Welcome to Golden Sands, the dream condominium built on a weak foundation
and a thousand dirty secrets. JDM’s powerful novel is a panoramic look at the
shocking facts of life in a Sun Belt community: the real estate swindles and political
payoffs, the maintenance charges that run up, and the health benefits that run out,
the crack-ups and marital breakdowns, the disaster that awaits those who play in
the path of a hurricane.
(Note: read this and Murder In The Wind and you just might stay away from Florida during Hurricane season.)
Appleton-Century: 1954
EVIL CASTS A LONG SHADOW . . .
and touches the innocent along with the guilty in this powerful,
probing novel of a family who can no longer hide from the world or
each other.
For years the Delevan image reflected only the best of everything
- wealth, position, influence, and the kind of expensive good
looks that takes generations to cultivate.
No one dared suspect that their glittering facade, their cherished
privacy masked hidden lusts, furtive pleasures, and twisted dreams
which would soon erupt into a pattern of strange violence that
threatened to destroy them all.
Simon and Schuster: 1959
Anton Drovek started The Crossroads Corporation forty years ago
with a shack and a petrol pump. Now it is a flourishing,
still-expanding motel.
The endless stream of trucks and cars, Maine-to-Florida and back,
stop here while their drivers eat, sleep, fill up and roll on.
'The crossroads is a smoothly managed oasis for the hungry
motorist and tired trucker. It's a booming little city, owned and
run by the tightly-knit, hard-driving Drovek family.
But all is not smooth beneath the surface. Sylvia, Peter Drovek's
wife, tells a young employee how he can steal Papa Drovek's
$200,000 in cash, though she doesn't mention that it is someone
else's cold, calculating plan.
None of the three persons who execute the robbery knows all that
the other two have in mind. The reader knows more than any of
them, but even he can't foresee the final violent explosion - an
ending which for some of the Droveks is a new beginning.
Popular Library: 1955
A GUNMAN ON THE RUN
A SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD CHICK
A USED-UP B-GIRL
A GUILT-STRICKEN WIDOWER
A LEFTOVER MISTRESS
ALL ZEROING IN ON - A ROUTE TO SUDDEN DEATH
A shattering six-car smashup is the explosive core of this head-long story.
In typical MacDonald fashion, we are introduced to a fascinating cast of characters
and shown what happens to them inside and out, before, during, and after the crash.
1952 by Fawcett
THE HEAT HIT THEM ALL . . .
the scorching heat of Mexico, and it ate at their nerves. The
stalled ferry held them in the heat until they could stand no
more.
The honeymooners fought, and loved and fought again. The
pretty little tramp clawed her married lover's eyes. The
trembling killer looked behind and knew his time was short.
There were others waiting, too, some good, some bad, but all
of them tormented by the shape of disaster to come.
Time gave them all a second chance.
Most of them stepped on the face of time.
1953 Fawcett
Set in Florida. It is the story of McClintock, a bitter man who
has taken refuge on the keys and shut away the world that had
scarred him.
But the world came after him—in the shape of a manic killer
who threatene McClintock's house of cards and taught him
how to love again.
Dell : 1959
Ramona Beach, Florida, was a dangerous place to mix
business with pleasure. Strangers usually meant
trouble, and the local sheriff echoed the town's
sentiments with a blackjack.
Once Ramona Beach had been my home, as a kid--but
now they'd railroaded me out of town. "Can't trust trash,"
they said. I'd never been back.
But that was then and this was now. Now I'd been sent
home by my employer, the Defense Department, to locate
a particular scientist and bring him back alive. But
Ramona Beach had a long memory, and
so did I . . .
Dell: 1957
In life, Jane Ann never had much use for a halo, but
in her violent death she finally earned one.
When they found a suspect, everyone relaxed, except me.
Maybe I should have stayed out of it, but I owed a big
debt to the patsy they were sending to the electric chair in
a week.
And I would have stayed out of it if I'd known what my
own chances were of coming out alive.
Dell: 1958
A Stunning Novel of Modern Morals
Her name was Cindy, and she was his neighbor's wife - the
woman next door in the kind of suburbia that didn't make
headlines. No cheap scandals here - no wife-swapping, no
key games. These were real people, nice people like Cindy
and Cark who fought with the desperation of the damned to
keep from wanting each other.
Had a perfect opportunity not presented itself, perhaps
nothing would have happened. But suddenly it was the right
time, the right place. And there was no room left for
pretense.
In that moment, all innocence drained out of their lives. Two
real people, two nice people, became creatures of passion -
and guilt.
Fawcett: 1963
Lucille Hanson had rid herself of the wrong man - her rich
husband who lived casually and loved carelessly. Then she
found another man she hoped would be right. She was
putting together the pieces of her life - determined not to
make the old mistakes, the foolish ones which had almost
wrecked her the first time around - until all of her hopes
came to rest at the bottom of a lake where her body was
found. It must have been an accident, was what others
wanted to think. But among her mourners just one person
refused to believe it was anything but murder.
1952 by Fawcett
THE HEAT HIT THEM ALL . . .
the scorching heat of Mexico, and it ate at their nerves. The
stalled ferry held them in the heat until they could stand no
more.
The honeymooners fought, and loved and fought again. The
pretty little tramp clawed her married lover's eyes. The
trembling killer looked behind and knew his time was short.
There were others waiting, too, some good, some bad, but all
of them tormented by the shape of disaster to come.
Time gave them all a second chance.
Most of them stepped on the face of time.
1953 Fawcett
Set in Florida. It is the story of McClintock, a bitter man who
has taken refuge on the keys and shut away the world that had
scarred him.
But the world came after him—in the shape of a manic killer
who threatene McClintock's house of cards and taught him
how to love again.
Dell : 1959
Ramona Beach, Florida, was a dangerous place to mix
business with pleasure. Strangers usually meant
trouble, and the local sheriff echoed the town's
sentiments with a blackjack.
Once Ramona Beach had been my home, as a kid--but
now they'd railroaded me out of town. "Can't trust trash,"
they said. I'd never been back.
But that was then and this was now. Now I'd been sent
home by my employer, the Defense Department, to locate
a particular scientist and bring him back alive. But
Ramona Beach had a long memory, and
so did I . . .
Dell: 1957
In life, Jane Ann never had much use for a halo, but
in her violent death she finally earned one.
When they found a suspect, everyone relaxed, except me.
Maybe I should have stayed out of it, but I owed a big
debt to the patsy they were sending to the electric chair in
a week.
And I would have stayed out of it if I'd known what my
own chances were of coming out alive.
Dell: 1958
A Stunning Novel of Modern Morals
Her name was Cindy, and she was his neighbor's wife - the
woman next door in the kind of suburbia that didn't make
headlines. No cheap scandals here - no wife-swapping, no
key games. These were real people, nice people like Cindy
and Cark who fought with the desperation of the damned to
keep from wanting each other.
Had a perfect opportunity not presented itself, perhaps
nothing would have happened. But suddenly it was the right
time, the right place. And there was no room left for
pretense.
In that moment, all innocence drained out of their lives. Two
real people, two nice people, became creatures of passion -
and guilt.
Fawcett: 1963
Lucille Hanson had rid herself of the wrong man - her rich
husband who lived casually and loved carelessly. Then she
found another man she hoped would be right. She was
putting together the pieces of her life - determined not to
make the old mistakes, the foolish ones which had almost
wrecked her the first time around - until all of her hopes
came to rest at the bottom of a lake where her body was
found. It must have been an accident, was what others
wanted to think. But among her mourners just one person
refused to believe it was anything but murder.
Popular Library: 1957
Lloyd Wescott was a big boy, and he knew that big money doesn't smell like roses. When he was hired to build and run the Green Oasis, he didn't have to ask the pedigree of its owner or where the backing came from. He didn't care, as long as the place was legit and he could run it clean as a whistle.
But just try to whistle when the Big Man moves in, when skimming is the least of what's going on in the casino, when the quiet luxury is crawling with contract guns, and when a soft, beautifulwoman - beaten to within an inch of her life - looks at you with love and fear and the desperate longing to escape . . .
First published 1960 by Simon and Schuster
THE WOLF PACK MURDERS
Three men and a beautiful girl on a cross-country terror spree - a coast-to-coast rampage of stealing, kidnapping, rape and killing.
Who were they? Where did they come from? Why did they do it? Who were their victims?
With chilling detail John D. MacDonald unwraps the grotesque inner world of these four drug-crazed young sadists and brings into terrifying focus those random, violent lusts that lie hidden between mischief and madness - waiting unseen for some innocent and helpless stranger at THE END OF THE NIGHT.
The first edition in 1957 by Fawcett brought great reviews. It was later re-issued under the title of Cape Fear, and the film version with Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum was very successful. Most JDM fans prefer this film to that released in the 90’s with Robert DeNiro playing the villain.
Max Cady has spent 14 years in a cell, plotting his revenge against the man who put him there, attorney Sam Bowden. Bowden’s teen-aged daughter may be the way Cady achieves his evil aim. There is a great deal of tension which is built by way of MacDonald’s skill in writing. Cady’s pursuit of the daughter is quite chilling. This is one of JDM’s best novels.
1962 by Simon and
Schuster
A GRIPPING NOVEL OF SMALL-TOWN CORRUPTION AND TWO PEOPLE WHO FIGHT IT.
Jimmy Wing was only trying to help his friend's
widow. At leasT that's what he told himself after
he warned Kate Hubble that the beautiful bay that
she and her neighbors had struggled to save was
now going to be sold to developers. He knew he
shouldn't have told her anything. He was a
reporter, trained to reveal nothing. But he
was falling in love with her.
The corruptors had taken over Palm City. Silent
and deadly like the snakes that infested the nearby
swamps, they lay hidden from view, waiting for
the right moment to strike. Political treachery
and private greed had already softened up the
town for the big sell-out.
All that had to be done now was to silence a few
stubborn citizens. Kate Hubble was one of them and
blackmail was their favorite weapon.
Note: This is often cited by readers as being a MacDonald favorite.
Also, it was adapted and directed by Victor Nunez into a film, in 1984.
JDM visited the film location one day and apparently felt that Nunez’ interpretation was very close to what he had in mind when writing the novel.