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My top ten mystery list

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Photo credit, Getty Images via Unsplash license.

Today is my birthday. Don’t ask which one. If anybody out there wants a birthday, you can have one of mine. I have a lot more than I need.

My friend Hunter Baker, of North Greenville University, has given tongue to the voice of multitudes, thus: “When, oh when,” those multitudes ask, “will Lars Walker offer a Top Ten list of his favorite mystery novels?”

To which I reply, “Why would anybody care what my favorite mystery novels are?”

Nevertheless, the challenge has been delivered, and I shall endeavor to give satisfaction.

First, some clarifications.

This list is not, and does not purport to be, an actual list of Best Books. There are whole swathes (I’ve grown uncertain how to pronounce that word: I’ve always rhymed it with “moths,” but other people rhyme it was “lathes.” Most troubling) of the mystery genre which I’ve rarely or never tried. Especially in the Cozy vein. Many passionate (sometimes frightening) people are devoted to Cozies; I haven’t got the nerve to laugh at them. I’ll just note that Cozy is not my cuppa arsenic-laced tea and, having writ, move on.

Agatha Christie remains, I believe, the most popular mystery writer in the world. I’ve read some Christie, but was not won over. Her focus is on the puzzle, not on the characters. Her readers delight in following clues and trying to figure out whodunnit before the Big Reveal at the end.

Me, I gave up solving mysteries long ago. On the rare occasions when I’m able to outthink the sleuth in a story, it’s usually because the author tipped his/her hand through trying to misdirect me in some way, and I caught him/her at it. I’m a better storyteller than a detective.

I read mysteries mostly to live vicariously through the characters and to observe them acting in extreme situations. I am not a man of action; I’ve managed to cram, I’d estimate, ten or twelve years of living into my three-score and several years of life.

With all this understood, here’s my Top Ten list. Purely personal, biased and subjective. Delivered with no authority whatever.

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Fiction, Reviews

‘The Turquoise Lament,’ by John D. MacDonald

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“To each one of us, the self is the most enchanting object in all creation. Sickness intensifies the preoccupation with self. And, of course, the true bore, the classic bore, is the person who is as totally preoccupied with himself all the time as the rest of us are when we are unwell.”

Among the polychromatic titles of all John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee books, The Turquoise Lament has always been one of my favorites. On re-reading, I’m not sure it’s as perfect as I remember (Travis goes to bed with two married women, that he admits to, in this story, and then there’s the question of Pidge’s age, less an issue back in the 1970s than it is now), but I certainly enjoyed it.

“Pidge” Lewellen is a girl Travis McGee has known for many years. He first met her as a young teenager, when he was working with her treasure-hunter father exploring old shipwrecks. She conceived a desperate crush on him back then, and he had to push her away a little roughly.

Now her father is dead and she’s married, and she writes him a letter. Travis flies to Honolulu to help her out. She tells him she’s afraid she’s losing her mind. She’s been seeing and hearing things that her husband, with whom she’s been voyaging in her late father’s yacht, tells her never happened. Trav knows her husband, Howie Brindle, a big, friendly, uncomplicated sort. He reassures Pidge, telling her she’s just suffering from anxiety. As they talk together, something sparks between them. She tells Trav that she doesn’t love her husband anymore. She has always loved him, and she’s going to come after him as soon as they’ve sold the boat and she’s gotten a divorce. Trav returns to Fort Lauderdale happy as an infatuated high school kid.

But later he gets another letter from her. It starts him looking into Howie’s background, and suddenly he understands that this guy is no teddy bear. He’s a sociopath, with a string of bodies in his wake. And now he’s alone on a boat with her in the south Pacific, hundreds of miles from any human contact

“Gaslighting” was not a common term back when The Turquoise Lament was written, but that’s what this story is about. It features all the standard philosophizing and educational sections explaining unfamiliar business operations that you expect from a McGee story. It was utterly fascinating all through, and poignant to boot.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Pale Gray for Guilt,’ by John D. MacDonald

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The shape of larceny is, in time, written clearly enough on a man’s face so that it can be read. Constant greed and sharp little deals and steals had left the sign on Preston LaFrance. There is the old saying that God and your folks give you the face you’re born with, but you earn the one you die with.

Ah, the joys of settling down with another Travis McGee novel. Even when author John D. MacDonald’s philosophy rings a little tinny, and the predictions have proven wrong in hindsight, Travis himself remains the best of friends – not only highly entertaining but reliable. Pale Gray for Guilt came out in 1968 and is one of the best in the series.

Tush Bannon is one of Travis McGee’s best old friends from his football days. He’s a big, cheerful, uncomplicated fellow, running a small business, raising a nice family. He has everything Trav can never have unless he alters his lifestyle, and Trav knows it. Then somebody decides to take Tush’s business away, and they take his life along with it. Travis is guilty that he wasn’t there to help. So he makes up his mind to get something back for the widow and the kids. And if a bad guy happens to get in the way of justice, he won’t hesitate to extract some blood too.

With the help of his economist friend Meyer, Trav sets up a neat and appealing con. The author of the book had a business degree from Harvard, and this sting, involving inflating a stock and getting out ahead of the pigeon before it crashes, was a little complex, but convincing. Along the way, McGee and Meyer have ample opportunity to look into the Abyss themselves, and glimpse it looking back at them.

Pale Gray for Guilt has the added element, in retrospect, of setting up a poignant plot element that will only bear fruit years later, in the last book of the series, The Lonely Silver Rain.

An outstanding entry in a classic series, Pale Gray for Guilt gets this reader’s highest recommendation. Cautions for adult situations, somewhat racy for the quaint old days of the 1960s.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Free Fall In Crimson,’ by John D. MacDonald

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“I woke up this morning feeling great. Absolutely great. Busting with energy. Know something? I want to get involved in the life and times of Esterland and son. I want to go out and con the people. I want to have to bust a couple of heads here and there and have somebody try to bust mine for me. Why should I feel a little bit guilty about feeling like that, Meyer?”

My life takes me into the state of Iowa fairly frequently, and back in the 1970s and 80s, a frequent feature of my drives down there was the sight of hot air balloons traversing the broad heavens. Iowa was a center for the sport of ballooning back in those days. Since that time, I’m informed, the activity has moved to the southwest. But that period remains memorialized in John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novel, Free Fall In Crimson, originally published in 1981.

In sequence, this novel follows The Green Ripper, in which McGee lost a woman he loved and hoped to make a future with. So he’s pretty low at the beginning. He’s losing weight, and even pondering dropping his “salvage” business, to become a boat salesman or something. His friend Meyer worries about him.

Then he’s contacted by Ron Esterland, a newly successful artist from New York. Ron explains that he’s troubled by the circumstances of his father’s death. His father was a successful Florida businessman, married several times, once to a movie star. He was dying of cancer when he was attacked in a highway rest area and beaten to death, more than a year ago. Ron had been estranged from his father, and doesn’t care about his money, but the timing seems suspicious. Could his father have been killed by someone connected to the actress ex-wife, for the inheritance?

McGee agrees to check it out, without great enthusiasm. But when he meets Anne Renzetti, manager of a hotel that Esterland had owned, his interest is piqued and his enthusiasm for life rekindled.

The investigation will take him back to Hollywood, to that snake pit from which he barely escaped alive back in the adventure of The Quick Red Fox. Once again he’ll encounter Lysa Dean, the gorgeous, calculating movie queen to whom he once delivered a rare rejection. She’ll connect him with the ex-wife’s boyfriend, a Hollywood director who’s shooting a movie about ballooning in Iowa. And that will lead him into a confrontation with a psycho motorcycle outlaw who’ll unleash a whole lot of reckless violence and death on a lot of people before the final showdown.

I’d read Free Fall In Crimson before, of course. But I hadn’t remembered much about it except for the balloon ride. I found it to be a very well-written and serious book, and I recommend it highly – with cautions for adult themes and a whole lot of innocent bloodshed.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Quick Red Fox,’ by John D. MacDonald

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He was a type. The totally muscled sportsman—muscles upon muscles so that even his face looked like a leather bag of walnuts.

Once again, we turn to a Travis McGee novel by John D. MacDonald – one of my favorites, I think. As I was enjoying it it, I was struck (not for the first time) by MacDonald’s ability to transcend his genre. He was, you’ll recall, writing paperback originals for Fawcett Publications – whose line of trade was sexy, violent stories for a male audience. They were competing directly for readers with Mickey Spillane.

And yet MacDonald takes the premise of The Quick Red Fox, a premise tailor-made for the Spillane audience (Hollywood sex goddess, being blackmailed, calls on studly private eye to save her reputation) and runs it in an entirely unexpected direction. He makes it a love story, with some kind of moral core.

Lysa Dean is a major Hollywood star, up there with Liz Taylor and Kim Novak. Her whole life is regimented, as is her appearance and physical health. But a year and a half back, she kicked loose for a while, hooking up with a shady guy. He took her to a wild house party at a place on a cliff on the California coast, where a lot of group sex took place. What she did not guess was that there was a man with a camera on the rocks a little way off, capturing the action through a telephoto lens. Now she’s being blackmailed.

She sends her personal assistant, Dana Holtzer, to bring McGee to see her. McGee isn’t much taken with Lysa, but Dana intrigues him. Dana is a very reserved woman, very efficient, very put-together. McGee takes the job, not for the money, but to get to know Dana. Lysa sends Dana along with him, as an assistant, and over time Dana thaws toward him, opening up about her past and her situation. McGee, who has always tried to avoid long-term commitments, begins thinking about settling down….

This, of course, cannot end well.

The Quick Red Fox is, I think, one of the best and most memorable of the Travis McGee series. McGee’s growing dreams of a life with Dana raise the emotional stakes, and the mystery remains baffling to the very end (I challenge anyone to figure out whodunnit in this one).

It’s notable that this story features two female characters who appear to be physically “flawless,” and they both leave McGee cold. He much prepares Dana, who (we are told) has some flaws. There’s a scene featuring a pair of hostile lesbians, which has no doubt contributed to the oft-repeated accusation that MacDonald was a homophobic writer. But McGee treats those women the way they demand to be treated, and his view of homosexuality was the conventional one for his time (and, I expect, for the future too).

There’s a lot of moral judgment in this story, more useful in what it opposes than in what it affirms. All McGee can come up with to express his own code is that “a moral act is one you feel good about afterward.” Author MacDonald could have done better than that, I hope, but he wasn’t delivering a moral lecture here.

In any case, I like The Quick Red Fox very much. Cautions for adult themes, pretty mild by today’s standards.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Damned,’ by John D. MacDonald

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But the girl’s fine eyes were on his, in helplessness and in appeal. And his father had said, many times, “When you have to do something right, boy, don’t stop to count how much money you got in your pants.”

Sometimes the great John D. MacDonald just liked to play plotting games, dumping an assortment of characters down in some location together, shaking them up, seeing what happened. That’s how his early (1952) novel, The Damned, works. This book reveals interesting strata of art – on the surface, it’s a fairly standard, sexy men’s novel of the time – some tough guys, some pretty women, some discreet sex, and a fair amount of violence. But even at this early point in his career, MacDonald is mining his material for high grade ore.

On the Rio Concho in northern Mexico, a ferry gets blocked. So a string of cars headed back to the U.S., most of them driven by Americans, is left waiting in the hot sun, their occupants impatient and uncomfortable to various degrees.

There’s the businessman coming back from the first infidelity of his married life, his heart full of guilt and his floozy by his side.

There’s the pair of newlyweds, accompanied by his mother (!). The bride is beginning to realize that the guy she’s married isn’t a grownup man, and probably never will be.

A tough petty criminal, wanted for murder, uncomfortably aware that the police are on his tail.

The small-time nightclub comedian, with two country girls he’s trained as strippers. He’s beginning to suspect, uneasily, that the girls are smarter than he is.

And an expatriate American rancher, comfortable in his skin and in the sun, the only one among them who understands – or cares to understand – the Mexican people all around.

We’ll see some fighting, and some death. People will be confronted with hard truth, about themselves and others.

Oddly, the story is left kind of open-ended. The author leaves it to the reader to ponder where these people will end up down the road, once the ferry is running again. And the narrative is framed by the simple life of a local man, as different from that of the Americans as a space alien’s would be – but a valuable life, good in its own way.

There was a remarkable moment in The Damned that moved me a great deal. A rare moment in a MacDonald book, as he rarely deals with issues of faith (except for one novel which I’ve avoided). A couple of the characters – ones you’d never expect – break out into singing the old hymn, “I Love to Tell the Story.” The reactions of the listeners are instructive.

The Damned is 1950s pulp literature that rises above its genre. Recommended, with cautions for adult themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Death Trap,’ by John D. MacDonald

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Realization was a long time in coming, and when it came in all its intensity, I knew that the world seldom saw as great a fool as I. She had magic, integrity, passion and a rare loveliness. And I had gone at her the way you go at one of those coin machines where you try to pick up the prize with a toy crane. I could have had the whole machine, with all the prizes and all the candy. But I had settled for gilt and glass.

Hugh MacReedy, hero-narrator of John D. MacDonald’s Death Trap, has never gotten over the mistake he made two years ago, when he was working as an engineer on a highway project near the town of Dalton (no state given). He had met the lovely Victoria Landry, and dated her. He then treated her as a score on a card and cast her off, hurting her deeply. Now he knows he blew the best thing that ever happened to him. But he also knows he’ll never get another chance with her. Until, back in Chicago from a job in Spain, he happens to pick up a newspaper and read that Vicky’s brother Alister, an awkward and arrogant genius, is scheduled to be executed for murder in a few days.

On impulse, Hugh cancels a vacation he’d planned and drives to Dalton instead. He finds Vicky, a shadow of her old self, devastated by her brother’s tragedy. At first she refuses Hugh’s help, still hurting from his rejection, but at last she offers him a deal. If her brother is executed, she says, she knows she’ll never be able to be any man’s wife. But if Hugh can find evidence to prove him innocent, she’ll give him another chance.

Hugh is strong and healthy, bright enough, and not shy. He can afford to spend money on an investigation. He’s in.

I call that a pretty good set-up for a mystery thriller. Death Trap was written in 1957, when author MacDonald was hitting his stride as a novelist, and Death Trap, it seems to me, is right up there with the very best. The town of Dalton is realistically portrayed, a town that’s experienced tragedy and corporately settled on a unanimous narrative, in which the truth is secondary. The girl Alister is supposed to have killed is remembered as a sweet, lovely child. In fact she was prematurely promiscuous, openly defiant of authority, and casually manipulative. Anyone questioning the accepted narrative, though, has to expect pushback – and Hugh gets it in spades, though he gives as good as he gets.

The book involves several vicious fights, but – interestingly – it’s psychology and a smart trap that nail the real murderer down in the end. Few things in literature age as poorly as old psychology – and the analysis does creak a little here – but all in all it works.

Death Trap is a top-notch, old-school pulp action mystery with added class. Recommended, with cautions, as you’d expect, for violence and non-explicit sexual situations.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Soft Touch,’ by John D. MacDonald

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But there was nothing like what I looked at when I whipped that piece of cloth aside. Nothing. I was one man when I pried the locks loose. And I was somebody else after I looked at the money. And I knew in some crazy way that I couldn’t ever go back to being the man who pried the locks, no matter how desperately I might want to.

The classic Noir is a moral tale, when it comes down to it. Something almost like a demonstration of the doctrine of Original Sin. Some ordinary guy, one like you or me, is faced with an irresistible temptation in a moment of vulnerability, and grabs it. And in that moment the trap is sprung, his fate is sealed, though he may not know it for a while.

Jerry Jamison, the “hero” of Soft Touch, a 1958 John D. MacDonald novel, is a World War II veteran. He did honorable service in the OSS in Southeast Asia. After his service he became a builder in Florida. Then he fell in love with the beautiful daughter of a land developer, married her, and went to work for her old man.

Only gradually did he realize that the old man is an idiot and the company is headed downhill. And his beautiful wife is an alcoholic. He wants to get out, but he’s short of resources.

Then his old war buddy Vince shows up. Vince has kept busy doing shady business in South America, and he has a business proposition. He knows a way to steal a fortune being transferred by a corrupt businessman planning a military coup. Nobody will claim the money, he promises. Finders keepers. After some brief hesitation, Jerry agrees.

The job doesn’t go as smoothly as they planned, of course. But they do get the money. More money than they even imagined.

And that’s when things really start going bad…

MacDonald, smart pro that he was, did not handle this story at all as I would have, which is just fine. Jerry Jamison is a well-drawn character, easy to identify with, which makes the tragedy all the more horrific. One element that’s unusual in this story (for a MacDonald book) is the inclusion of a humble Christian character, who tries – in all innocence – to steer Jerry the right way. Whether her admonitions are meant to be taken seriously, or rather as echoes of futility, is up to the reader to determine.

Soft Touch is a very effective Noir novel. Recommended, if you like the genre.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cry Hard, Cry Fast,’ by John D. MacDonald

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A horrific multi-car smashup on a four-lane highway forms the narrative center of John D. MacDonald’s 1956 novel, Cry Hard, Cry Fast.

The book begins with a lot of dramatic tension, as we are introduced to several carloads of fragile human beings and informed matter-of-factly that they are about to die. There’s a young businessman mourning his wife, concerned about a thumping in his tire but too preoccupied to stop and get it fixed. A family of four, dominated by an angry father who drives too fast. A young couple trying to save their marriage with a nostalgic vacation. A young woman fleeing a failed affair.  A couple bank robbers in a stolen car, and the girl they picked up, trying to put distance between themselves and the police. An aging truck driver contemplating retirement.

After the accident happens, the survivors (those who are conscious) do their best to start putting their lives together, struggling with guilt, rethinking their plans, or scheming to reclaim lost loot.

Not even John D. MacDonald could knock it out of the park with every book. Cry Hard, Cry Fast isn’t a bad novel, especially considering it was originally meant for the men’s pulp market. It’s certainly more profound than most of its competition. But I felt the treatment here was a little superficial, the characters a little stereotyped, the resolution not as satisfying (especially viewed in the light of changed societal attitudes since this book’s publication) as it might have been.

It was interesting to note (as a native of the era) the changes that have been made in life on the road since 1956 – MacDonald describes “the yellow octagon of the stop sign” and nobody wears seat belts (this book makes a pretty good argument for their use).

Worth reading, but not the top of the crop.

There’s a fair amount of sex in this book, and one troubling scene where a naked 17-year-old girl is described (through her mother’s eyes, but still…)

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Brass Cupcake,’ by John D. Mac Donald

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The breeze was crisp. She turned toward it, her hands jammed into the jacket pockets. I wanted her carved on the bow of my next clipper ship, but it would have to be a good guy to capture the way that silvery hair moved in the wind.

John D. MacDonald actually wrote in various genres before finding his niche in mystery fiction. His first published mystery novel, in 1950, was The Brass Cupcake. I had read it before, and remembered it positively. But it’s clearly an immature work, and a little derivative.

The title is the narrator’s joking nickname for a policeman’s badge. He is Cliff Bartells, an insurance investigator in the fictional (I think) town of Florence City, Florida, somewhere near Tampa. He used to carry a badge himself, but he left the Florence City police force because of its prevailing corruption. Now he has a reputation for brokering the recovery of stolen property – it’s cost-effective for both the criminals and the insurers to buy the stuff back rather than paying out full settlements. He’s trusted by the crooks, because he never informs on them.

Only now a case has come up that’s a whole different matter. A wealthy old woman has been murdered in a jewel robbery. When he hears from the thieves, Cliff’s position is impossible – if he doesn’t betray the robbers, the local police (who hate him) will arrest him as an accessory. And if he does betray them, his professional reputation will be shot.

Then there’s a further complication – the old woman’s beautiful niece and heir. They dislike each other on first meeting, only to find themselves irresistibly drawn together. The police suspect them both. Can he trust her? Can he trust anyone?

It’s easy to see why author MacDonald impressed his publishers with this book. It’s almost ideal for its time – a tough-guy story with a principled hero in a bad spot, featuring fights and police beatings and a little sex (mild by our standards). Noir cinema seems to have been an inspiration: “I pushed the draperies back so that the neon sent its pale redness into the room, off and on, off and on, the furniture bulking oddly large in the intermittent shadow.” I have an idea the story may have been inspired in part by James M. Cain – though that’s an ignorant opinion, as I’ve never read Cain.

The book’s age is made apparent in several ways, not only in the cars and the smoking – but especially in the featured idea that women (or some women, anyway) need a slap or two to figure out what they really want.

Anyway, that’s The Brass Cupcake. Underdeveloped MacDonald, but certainly entertaining and worth a read.