Six years ago, I decided to take a deep dive into the MacDonald oeuvre. I had never read the books, having grown up in Belgium in a family where the books on the shelf were Simenon, Hard, Boileau-Narcejac and other French writers of "polars" as we say over there... I approach JDM systematically, all the Traps in order, then all the stand alone in chronological sequence. I think I have one compendium of short stories left, otherwise, mission accomplished! I think the biggest inspiration for me was learning to write fast, pound that keyboard like he did, let all the stuff out. Blue Goodbye is still my favorite, with that other one that has the gold Maya statuettes in it!
Nice! I keep finding new JDMs...he wrote fast but carefully, and they're just great! I love the short story collections, by the way, especially The Good Old Stuff.
Six years ago, I decided to take a deep dive into the MacDonald oeuvre. I had never read the books, having grown up in Belgium in a family where the books on the shelf were Simenon, Hard, Boileau-Narcejac and other French writers of "polars" as we say over there... I approach JDM systematically, all the Traps in order, then all the stand alone in chronological sequence. I think I have one compendium of short stories left, otherwise, mission accomplished! I think the biggest inspiration for me was learning to write fast, pound that keyboard like he did, let all the stuff out. Blue Goodbye is still my favorite, with that other one that has the gold Maya statuettes in it!
Nice! I keep finding new JDMs...he wrote fast but carefully, and they're just great! I love the short story collections, by the way, especially The Good Old Stuff.
My dad loved the Travis McGee stuff too! Also Mike Hammer, which I was never able to get into as much. Oh well.
I've added Ocean Drive to my "next" reading list.
Thanks! Yeah I never quite got the Spillanes, though Kiss Me Deadly is one of the best PI films.