RARA-AVIS: Re: Time to Start Reading a New Book

From: Kevin Burton Smith (kvnsmith@sbcglobal.net)
Date: 24 Jul 2009

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    John wrote:

    > This time it comes down to this: I need to read more early, non-
    > McGee John D. MacDonald.
    > Anybody have a suggestion?

    A FLASH OF GREEN (also made into a decent little flick with Ed Harris)

    THE BRASS CUPCAKE

    THE LAST ONE LEFT

    and for something completely different:

    CRY HARD, CRY FAST

    MacDonald flexes his writing muscles on this one, with an ambitious, sprawling character study revolving around a horrendous car wreck and the lives affected by it. MacDonald would revisit this sort of cast-of- thousands, almost Arthur Haileye-like thriller several times (the bloated CONDOMINIUM comes to mind) but he never got it so right as in the tight, hard CRY HARD, CRY FAST.

    Or at least that's how I remember it. It's been a long time now.

    But speaking of cars that go bang, was there anyone else out there scarred for life by reading HOT ROD by Felsen. One might call that one
    "car wreck noir".

    I was a real car nut as a kid, reading every car and hot rod book by I could find (William Campbell Gault was one of my first writer heroes, right up there with Franklin W. Dixon, Farley Mowat and Alan Terhune), but the wreck in HOT ROD scared the crap out of me.

    Kevin

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