ONE MORE SUNDAY - Book review

 

John D. MacDonald wrote many standalone novels, besides twenty-one books in his popular Travis McGee series. One More Sunday is one of them. Published in 1984, it concerns the Church of the Eternal Believer – a big fundamentalist business using all the tricks of the religious trade.

Reverend John Tinker Meadows is the leader now; Matthew, the founder, his father, is in the throes of dementia. ‘But the face was like a castle where once a king had lived, a castle proud and impregnable. But the king had left, the pennons were rags, the gates open, moat dry, and an old wind sighed through the empty corridors’ (p56). Alongside John is his sister Mary Margaret, strong and devout.

The New York Times considered the book ‘highly topical and controversial’. John’s sermon at the outset probably justifies that comment: ‘Once upon a time our nation was great. Now we sag into despair. The climate changes, the acid rains fall, the great floods and droughts impoverish millions, taking the savings of those who thought they could be provident in these times. We see all our silent factories, all the stacks without smoke, like monuments to a civilization past. Selfish owners refused to spend for modernization. Selfish unions struck for the highest wages in the world. We see rapist and murderers and armed robbers turned loose after a short exposure to that prison environment which gratifies all their hungers and teaches them new criminal arts. We see an endless tide of blacks and Hispanics entering our green land illegally, taking the bread out of the mouths of those few of us still willing to do hard manual labour’ (P11) – and so on...

Ray Owen is an investment broker taking leave from his work. He is trying to find his missing wife, Lindy, who had been writing an article on the Church of the Eternal Believer for her New York magazine Out Front.

Glinda Lopez works for the Church, using a voice synthesiser, imitating Matthew Meadows, and telephones Church members delinquent in their tithes.

Joe Deets is a computer nerd – and clever. He has programmed the computers to cream off some funds donated to the Church. He is also a sexual predator of young women. ‘There was a beast in a cage in the back of his mind, in the shadows, pacing tirelessly to and fro, showing only the glint of a savage eyeball, the shine of a predator’s fang’ (p43). He was presently indulging himself with Doreen, one of the Church’s ‘Angels’.

The Meadows family lives well, travels first class, and have their own jet planes. All thanks to the generous donations.

Within these pages you’ll find hypocrisy, greed, pathos, anger, murder, redemption and hope.

MacDonald masterfully presents a fairly large cast of characters, all individual, each with their own past and failings, their hopes and dreams.

Not much has changed in the last forty years since this was written.

THE LAST ONE LEFT - book review

It’s a long time since I read a John D. MacDonald novel. This one was first published in 1967; my edition is the 2014 Random House copy, recently purchased. Amusingly, MacDonald dedicated the novel ‘to Travis McGee who lent invaluable support and encouragement’.

It begins and also ends with the boating couple Howard and June Prowt off the Gold Coast off Florida. Anyone who has read MacDonald will be familiar with his knowledge of sailing craft, which shows in his description of both the vessel and the state of the sea. They thought they saw a boat adrift but were unable to go alongside and then it was gone.

Staniker has survived an explosion at sea; he’d been hired to captain the boat for the Kayd family. He’s the last one left, the rest of the passengers have perished. He is being nursed back to health.

Sam Boylston, a Texas lawyer, is mourning the death of his sister Leila – she was one of the passengers on the Kayd vessel.  Leila’s husband Jonathan was convinced she was alive and planned a hair-brained search for her in the vast ocean.

Chrissie Harkinson is pleased to bed the young boat boy Oliver for she has a use for him. She also knows Staniker so naturally she visits him, just to see how he’s doing…

And so begins a convoluted but easy to follow plot that is pure MacDonald. His descriptions of characters, minor and major, and the locales are spot on, as ever. Oh, yes, indeed, there’s certainly something not right. There’s the question of a considerable amount of cash involved which might be missing… There’s also a beautiful Cuban maid with an interesting back-story, and she is involved with Raoul Kelly, an investigative reporter.

The characters are set up, the plot is unfolding and it all falls into place. And as you’d expect with one of John D.’s mystery thrillers there are murders and betrayals.

Loved it. Good to reacquaint myself with you, John D. You might have died in 1986, aged seventy, but you still excite your readers three decades later.

Book review - The Redemption of Charm

Frank Westworth’s The Redemption of Charm is the third in the Killing Sisters trilogy, following on from A Last Act of Charity and The Corruption of Chastity, all featuring hard-man  John-Jacques Stoner, known by most as JJ. The three killing sisters are Charity, Chastity and Charm.

You don’t need to have read the first two books, though there are inevitably back-references to incidents and characters. At the beginning of this book, JJ is in the United States, possibly in hiding, slowly recovering both mentally and physically from the trauma of betrayal, corruption and extreme violence in the previous book.

‘… his mind was healing as his body hardened. That as the fracturing inside his head knitted itself, so the flab of a civilised lifestyle was leaving his muscles, which were tightening and lightening, becoming tougher and stronger. Both his body and his brain were preparing for a fight. Flight was over; the time to fight was still over the horizon, but its presence was inescapable, looming insistent, and oddly welcome.’ (p42)

JJ does violence very well, too, as a few stroppy mugging bikers discover in a neatly choreographed example of aggression (pp33-36).

Chastity is an interesting character, who hungered for bookstores and cities rather than the big open air spaces. She hated driving in the city: ‘She could have been the original sufferer from road rage, and found intolerable the stupid behaviour of fools who should in her view never have been granted a birth certificate, never mind a driver’s licence. City streets were filled with potential accidental murderers at the wheels of heavy weapons.’ (p125)

The novel is peppered with similar philosophical asides, which reminded me slightly of the late great John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee. One of JJ’s Stateside pals is an FBI agent, Travis, though of a different complexion!

Another enjoyable aspect is the wit and word-play: ‘(JJ) simply appeared to lack both curiosity  – which was famously fatal to felines – and appeared also to be wondrously capable of detaching himself from everything unimportant to him.’ (p127)  When another of JJ’s pals remarks, ‘I am a believer’ JJ responds, ‘Great song, wasted on monkeys.’ Yes, he is corrected: ‘Monkees, like trainee monks…’ (p221)  And the word-play seems inexhaustible; indeed, as Stoner is an ex-soldier, an assassin, which is also referred to as a stone killer. (p268)  There are plenty more instances, but I’ll confine myself to only one more. JJ is wearing a pair of camo-pattern biker pants with reinforced knees. Chastity suggests, ‘Useful for aggressive praying.’ (p362)

And we know where sympathies lie. ‘… politics is a much dirtier game than contract killing.’ (p203)

Ultimately, JJ is on a quest to silence whoever has most recently wrecked his life, or die in the attempt. He now trusts very few people, understandably. Can he trust Chastity and Charm? And what about the murderous Irish femme fatale Blesses?

Gritty, often raw in language, and brutal at times, with graphic sex, this convoluted plot is not for the easily offended. It is however a fascinating excursion into the psyche of JJ himself, a character who leaps off the page, whether he’s riding his Harley or playing his guitar or chilling out with cool torch singers, or delivering his own form of justice. Just don’t let grandmother read it – unless she was a gangster’s moll in a former life…

The Redemption of Charm

Writing - a serious laugh

Recently, a Guardian columnist who shall remain nameless displayed his literary snob credentials on his sleeve, criticising the massive affectionate outpouring for the late Sir Terry Pratchett, claiming there were many more worthy authors that should be read instead. In short, he felt that too much emphasis was placed on popular fiction instead of that serious stuff. Oh, and to make matters worse, he hadn’t actually read any of Pratchett’s books! The online comments in response seemed almost universal in their condemnation of his article and stance.

Maybe he feels that literature should address the human condition and not popular demand. Clearly, he hasn’t read anywhere enough popular fiction, as virtually every day popular authors are writing about the travails we face on this mortal coil, though invariably wrapped up in genre fiction.

I recall one reviewer of John D. MacDonald stated, ‘I shall not forgive John D. if he embarks on the Great American Novel. He is writing a chapter of it with every McGee thriller.’ MacDonald used humour in his genre fiction too.

 

The columnist must lack a sense of humour. I don’t mean the wonderful humour in Pratchett’s books – though he would doubtless be a more engaging columnist if he absorbed some of that writer’s slant on the world.

I write crime novels (and westerns and fantasy) which tend to look at the human predicament within the specific genre. Human frailty has been with us throughout history and will continue as such until the social engineers strip all individuality from us. Yet in contrast to the seriousness of conflict and drama, life also has humour. Life would be so drab without a laugh.

So I was particularly pleased that a recent Amazon review (of Catalyst) used the word ‘amusing’ to describe what is essentially a crime thriller.

‘This was an amusing read from start to finish. Vengeance takes many forms but it doesn’t necessarily leave a good taste in the mouth for Catherine Vibrissae - there are some recurring regrets. Catherine has a grand plan and not much is going to deflect her from fully carrying it through, yet reading of such important deeds doesn’t have to be a serious business as we find out in Catalyst! Her skills are numerous, but I loved that the author, Nik Morton, manages to inject her competence with a degree of quiet dignity. Preconceived notions about the past aren’t always entirely accurate and Cat has much to learn as the adventure unfolds…

‘Rick Barnes is a character who is easy to like and I particularly found his physiological talents quite funny. To say more might spoil things for the potential reader but if you’re looking for a quick and satisfying read, I can thoroughly recommend Catalyst. I’m definitely looking forward to Book 2 in the series.’

The point is, despite the suspense and danger, humour is in there, sometimes lovers fencing with words, sometimes as a response to a tricky situation – just like life. You need to use humour to get through the day, sometimes.

 
And laugh at columnists who think their reading experience is superior to your own.

Travis McGee - Book Chronology

If you've read this blog

http://nik-writealot.blogspot.com.es/2015/03/ffb-cinnamon-skin.html

or have an interest in John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee crime series, then you should enjoy this illuminating article which involves quite a bit of detective work too:

http://thetrapofsolidgold.blogspot.com.es/2015/04/the-chronology-of-travis-mcgee-novels.html

Below are the first 8 covers from my collection of 19 books in the series. I like the uniform approach (though the man shooting is a bit naff, perhaps, and was dropped by #8). The spines also reflected the colour of the title up to and including #6.

 

 

 

 

FFB - Cinnamon Skin

The penultimate Travis McGee novel by John MacDonald was published in 1982. I read the first in the series, The Deep Blue Goodbye (1964), in 1968 and was hooked. He wrote twenty-one McGee books. For the last few years I’ve been holding back from reading the final few; now, only one more to go – The Lonely Silver Rain (1985).

As can be guessed by the above, all the McGee titles feature a colour – pink, purple, orange, brown, gold, red etc – and the colours are juxtaposed with an unusual noun or adjective: Nightmare in Pink (1964), A Purple Place for Dying (1964), A Tan and Sandy Silence (1971), The Scarlet Ruse (1973) and Darker than Amber (1966), for example. The latter was made into a film starring Rod Taylor as McGee; The Deep Blue Goodbye is scheduled to star Christian Bale and Rosamund Pike.

Cover photo by Tony McGee!

 

McGee is a ‘salvage consultant’ – he finds things and people for his clients, often at great personal risk. He takes a percentage of the retrieved booty, usually.  McGee lives on a houseboat, The Busted Flush, in Florida, and his best pal is economist Meyer, who lives on the John Maynard Keynes – well, that’s where Meyer used to live until in this novel the boat is blown to smithereens, together with Mayer’s niece Norma and her new husband Evan.

A chance photograph alerts McGee to some dastardly chicanery and together with the grieving Meyer he starts digging. It isn’t giving too much away (since the blurb does this anyway), but it seems that Evan ‘had a lot of names in a lot of places, a lot of financial windfalls after a lot of deaths,  and a lot of dead wives…’

At the end of their last caper (The Green Ripper, 1981), Meyer was totally demoralised and was only gradually recovering when this latest tragedy occurred. Slowly, Meyer began to return to his old self, and after one brief moment of revelation, McGee says, ‘I’ve missed your impromptu lectures.’ To which Meyer responds, ‘Be careful what you say, I may try to make up for the lost year.’

‘I haven’t missed them that much,’ McGee ends (p152). Here and elsewhere, MacDonald injects humour, because life is like that. It isn’t all dark, or all light for that matter.

This begins as a slow burn story, until the explosion occurs, then the suspense and tension mount as the pair start asking questions.

Somebody once wrote that MacDonald needn’t attempt to write the American Dream novel, as each of his McGee books did that, an episode at a time, exposing the socio-political scene, not only in Florida, but the US as a whole.

MacDonald commits the cardinal sin of having his characters speak for very long paragraphs, which is unrealistic, but we forgive him because his characters always have something interesting to say, whether you agree with the viewpoint or not. And sometimes there are special insights. Here’s a snippet from p63: ‘The future managers have run on past us into the thickets of M-Basic, Fortran, Z-80, Apples and Worms. Soon the bosses of the microcomputer revolution will sell us pre-programmed units for each household which will provide entertainment, print out news, purvey mail-order goods, pay bills, balance accounts… But by then the future managers will be over on the far side of the thickets, dealing with bubble memories, machines that design machines, projects so esoteric our pedestrian minds cannot comprehend them. It will be the biggest revolution of all, bigger than the wheel, bigger than Franklin’s kit, bigger than paper towels.’ That’s quite a jump to now from 1982. And he couldn’t resist the humour of ‘paper towels’, either.

 
McGee is a moral man but on occasion he has to be dishonest when obtaining information. He doesn’t like it, but it’s necessary: ‘No matter how many times you do it, how many times you pretend to be someone you aren’t, and you get the good-hearted cooperation of some trusting person, you feel a little bit soiled. There is no smart-ass pleasure to be gained from misleading the innocent.’
 
Though not religious, McGee believes in evil. ‘I start with the assumption that there is such a thing as evil which can exist without causation. The black heart which takes joy in being black… the rogue.’ (pp132/133).
 
MacDonald died in 1986, aged 70.

It figures, maybe

Yesterday’s blog drew some comment on the blog and on FaceBook. Again, I emphasise that the statistics are not mine, but gleaned from a newspaper’s graphic. And the argument is against the big publishers, not the independents.

In my library I have a book printed in 1980, long before e-books, and it gives a breakdown on where the money went on a hardback novel then.  It makes interesting reading, even now.

 

 

BRITAIN

Author – 10%

Text printing and paper – 5.6%
Jacket printing and paper – 1.8%
Binding and freight – 2.6%
Bookseller – 41%
Publisher’s overheads – 20.6%
Publisher’s profit – 9.2%
Composition and plate making – 8.6%
Jacket design and artwork - .6%
 
USA

Author – 10%

Text printing and paper – 3.7%
Jacket printing and paper – 1.5%
Binding and freight – 4.7%
Bookseller – 47%
Publisher’s overheads – 23.9%
Publisher’s profit – 1.3%
Composition and plate making – 6.7%
Jacket design and artwork - 1.2%

The differences are accounted for, apparently, as the example is based on a print run of 5,000. The ‘British market is smaller; a sale of 5,000 copies in Britain is above average; in the US it is close to the norm.’

- Novels and Novelists, Editor Martin Seymour-Smith, 1980.

Now, I’ll just look at the British figures, as if enlightened by the e-book arrival:

Sure, figures have probably altered over 34 years – though not in the authors’ favour. And who said publishers react quickly? As John D MacDonald said, ‘If you would be thrilled by the galloping advance of a glacier, then you’d be ecstatic watching changes in publishing.' They were late to grasp the e-book nettle and then discovered they could profit hugely...

 

Anyway, back to the chase. If we exclude all the print associated overheads (say, 39.2%), we arrive at 60.8% of the cover price. So, at a rough-and-ready estimate, the e-book cover price should be at least 39% less than the print version. I suspect that is not the case for new e-books coming from the big 5 (or however few are left after the latest amalgamation, conglomeration, takeover).

 
Author – 10%
Bookseller – 41%
Publisher’s profit – 9.2%
Jacket design and artwork - .6%
Total percentage of cover price = 60.8%

[All of the following are probably associated with a print version, not e-book]
Publisher’s overheads – 20.6%
Text printing and paper – 5.6%
Jacket printing and paper – 1.8%
Binding and freight – 2.6%
Composition and plate making – 8.6%
Total percentage in this group – 39.2%
 
Mark Twain had something to say about statistics. I’m sure he had a view on percentages, as well. Even so, it’s plain as a pikestaff, to use an out-dated cliché, that certain publishers are attempting a form of profiteering where e-books are concerned.

(The earlier mid-16^th century phrase was ‘plain as a packstaff’, which alluded to the staff on which a pedlar carried his pack, which was in plain view. Amphitryon, III, Dryden.)

Tomorrow, back to a non-controversial subject, perhaps…

Writing tips – Book titles

Many writers struggle with finding a suitable title for their book. Just browse the book shelves and you’ll see the variety. Some stick in the mind, while others don’t. You might be contemplating writing a series, so immediately it would be a fine idea to have the titles linked for the series.

Nora Roberts, writing as J.D. Robb has the word ‘Death’ in her near-future series.

John D. MacDonald used a colour in his Travis McGee titles.

 

 

And Simon Brett uses alliteration in his Fethering crime series, viz:

The Body on the Beach, Death on the Downs, The Torso in the Town, Murder in the Museum, The Hanging in the Hotel etc.

The following is an extract from Chapter 6 of Write a Western in 30 Days.

 

The title of your book should attract the reader’s attention and even provide sufficient intrigue so that the cover will be turned over and the first page will be read. If the cover and title do that, it’s done the job. Of course, it helps if the title is memorable!

The title should be one or all of these:
     
Phrased concisely

Expressed in concrete terms – not abstract ones

Able to arouse curiosity concerning the main character’s predicament

Fresh

 

Often, the ideal method to conjure up a suitable title is to fasten on an aspect of the book’s conflict.

A turn of phrase that sums up the underlying theme might work, too.

Or play on the words: Blind Justice at Wedlock was about the hero being blinded and seeking justice. I couldn’t simply use Blind Justice, as that title was already over-used. There is no copyright for a book title, but it pays to check that your title hasn’t just been released into the marketplace. If it was used several years ago, then that’s not a big problem, but if the title is recent, then it can cause confusion. It might also suggest that it’s not particularly original.

Sometimes, a phrase from a quotation might serve. Beware of using quotations from individuals who have not been dead for at least seventy years – they’re probably still in copyright and you might need to get permission to use the quotation. Prolific author E.V. Thompson’s story about early Texas, Cry Once Alone (1984) used this title from a lengthy quotation of Comanche Chief Ten Bears.    

Generally, one-word titles rarely work in the memorability stakes. If there hadn’t been a film featuring Paul Newman, would Elmore Leonard’s book title Hombre be as memorable? Probably not. One-word titles don’t evoke any image in the mind’s eye, particularly if they’re abstract – hence, the recommendation to use concrete terms.

Yet, to contradict that observation, they’ve always been popular with western writers – not least, Louis L’Amour: Brionne, Callaghen, Catlow, Chancy, Conagher, Fallon, Flint, Hondo, Matagorda, Shalako, Sitka, and Sackett, among others, so perhaps it’s the exception that proves the rule? If the title is a character’s name or the town’s name, it might work.

In the end, maybe it comes down to personal preference. But don’t always go for the simplest option – the character’s or the town’s name.

Sometimes, the theme is significant and can be used for the title, as long as it isn’t too abstract.

Indeed, the title might depend on whether or not you’ve decided to write about a series character. That may dictate a slightly different approach to selecting a title. Oliver Strange’s character Sudden, for example, started out with the book The Range Robbers (1930) but was followed by Sudden (1933) and six more with the Sudden name in the title.

Don’t get bogged down thinking about a title. Quite a number of authors simply use a ‘working title’ just to get started, feeling sure that by the time the book’s finished, a title will come to mind.

E-book from Amazon com bought from here

E-book from Amazon co uk bought from here

or paperback post-free world-wide from here

On Amazon.com this book has eight 5-star reviews and two 4-star reviews; on Amazon.co.uk it has an additional three 5-star reviews.

This book is a very useful guide for anyone wanting to write genre fiction – that is, any genre, not only westerns. Those aren’t my words, but the opinion of reviewers on Amazon.

FFB – Free Fall in Crimson by John D. MacDonald

Published in 1981 – some five years before MacDonald’s death, aged 70. This was the 19th Travis McGee adventure. Besides each novel title featuring a colour, they also contained delectable female companions, nasty villains, exotic locals such as Florida, Mexico and the Caribbean. McGee’s sidekick, friend and sounding-board is Meyer, an economist and Ph.D. McGee lives on his 52-foot (16 m) houseboat, the Busted Flush, named for the poker hand that started the run of luck in which he won her, and introduced in the first novel, The Deep Blue Goodbye. She is docked at Slip F-18, Bahia Mar marina, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

This time around, McGee is tasked with finding out who murdered the millionaire cancer-riddled Ellis Esterland. His enquiries take him into the macho world of outlaw bikers, the crazy lives of film producers and actresses, and the dangerous pursuit of hot-air ballooning. This time around, his female companion is the luscious Anne Renzetti, ex-secretary of the murdered tycoon. Sometimes, his prose is hard-nosed and at other times, it’s lyrical, viz: ‘… moving in that sweet silence across the scents, the folds, the textures of the soft green April country’ when describing McGee’s first air-balloon journey.

MacDonald’s McGee crime books are hardboiled. Along the way, his first person narrative reveals the flawed American Dream.

Surprisingly, times haven’t changed – some 31 years later. As one character says, ‘But lots of terrible things are happening everywhere, I guess. Why is everybody getting so angry?’

Today, lack of driving standards is bemoaned. Nothing new there, then: ‘growling traffic, the trucks tailgating, the cowboys whipping around from lane to lane, and the Midwest geriatrics chugging slowly down the fast lanes, deaf to all honkings.’

Craftily, MacDonald uses Meyer to write about things that irk him, such as declining literacy. The Meyer speech is too long to reproduce here, but this is a taster: ‘In a nation floundering in functional literacy, sinking into the pre-chewed pulp of television, it heartens me to know that here and there are little groups of younguns who know what an original idea tastes like, who know that the written word is the only possible vehicle for transmitting a complex concept from mind to mind, who constantly flex the muscles of their heds and make them stronger… Nor will these children be victimized by the blurry nonsense of the so-called social sciences. The muscular mind is a cutting tool, and contemporary education seeks to take the edge off it.’

Yes, he breaks the rule about characters spouting long swathes of speech, but he seems to get away with it. Because he’s good, very good. I'd recommend any Travis McGee to anyone who has never tried one. This, like the others, is well crafted, with believable characters.