After reading the third of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee
books, I went on to the fourth, THE QUICK RED FOX. In the
first four chapters McGee declines to make love to a
beautiful movie star, a beautiful illustrator, and a
beautiful alcoholic. There's a beautiful personal assistant
to the movie star, but she's icy (until later, of course, but
at the end she gets hit on the head and decides to leave
him). There's a hilarious scene where McGee is threatened by
two large, tough lesbians, and he whacks their behinds with
the handle of a golf club. The salvage operation--cleaning up
a blackmail operation--gets confused at the end, and there
are lots of asides that would drive non-fans crazy, but I
still liked it.
I read it to see if McGee discussed work, but there was
nothing special. He pities and scorns people who go to dull
jobs to pay for their dull lives in dull plastic modern
society. Those are the same people that would read about him.
He knows and likes to deal with experts, and respects them.
He'd rather have money and not have to work, but he needs the
adventure and the sense of being the tin knight.
Some suggestions that were made that relate to the theme of
work: Jason Starr's books, Mr. Pelecanos' books, Gores' DKA
books, Hamilton's Matt Helm books, Hammett's Op stories
(except maybe THE DAIN CURSE), and Richard Stark's Parker
series. Anyone have any comments about hardboiled writing and
work? It's such an important theme, surely more people will
have something to say. Why did all those tough dicks work so
cheap when they kept getting hit on the head?
I read THE SHADOWERS earlier this week, #7 in the Matt Helm
series, and it was very good. Same year, 1964, as THE QUICK
RED FOX, and also from Fawcett Gold Medal. In this one,
Helm's girlfriend dies in a car accident right off the bat,
and he calls his boss Mac to say he can't stay on holiday any
more and wants to come back to work. He gets in on an
operation where enemy agents are shadowing important people,
and he's to guard a scientist (a beautiful woman, of course).
There's a fair bit of grim stuff, and he uses a completely
innocent young woman to get out of a jam; she's later raped
and beaten, and she ends up dead. Helm has to walk out on a
woman who needs him. But it's his job, and innocent people
get hurt. He tries to stop it when he can, but as everyone's
noted, he's a professional killer, he takes his job very
seriously, and he doesn't let anything get in his way. The
ending is bleak.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
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