I read a couple of 1957 John D. MacDonalds this week. He
published his first novel in 1950, and by the end of 1957 he
was up to twenty-four!
A MAN OF AFFAIRS is quite a short book. It's set in the
business world, sort of, which I don't think he'd done
before. Sam Glidden is vice-president of a company in
trouble. The old president, last in a family line, died
recently and the new president is ineffectual. A rich
wheeler-dealer named Mike Dean is moving in and trying to buy
up the shares belonging to the dead man's son and
daughter.
Everyone ends up at Mike Dean's Caribbean island, along with
a variety of others: magazine people, PR people, a faded
movie star, etc. Dean's trying to get Glidden on his side so
the son and daugher will sell out. There's swimming,
drunkenness, debauchery, sex, finance, fishing, a young black
girl named Booty, a thirty-ish white woman named Puss, and
more. It's interesting seeing JDM get into the business
world, which from what I recall played a larger part as his
books went on. I think he got stuck on the ending and just
did what he could to finish it fast.
THE EMPTY TRAP is nice, tight, fast stuff. It starts off with
Lloyd Wescott being driven to his death: his girlfriend has
just been murdered and on page 11 they're both put into a car
and pushed off a Mexican cliff. Wescott's thrown clear, but
suffers massive injuries. He's found by some mountain
villagers who nurse him back to health, and then he goes back
to the U.S. to kill the people who'd come after him for
stealing his boss's money and wife. If you've got a cold and
you're stretched out on the sofa with nothing to do, this is
the kind of thing you want to read. Classic PBO stuff.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
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