The first Tray book I read was The Deep Blue Goodbye and Junior Allen was a chiller. The con man as a sexual animal, emphasis on animal. Cady is worse but that's because of Mitchum. I read the book after seeing the movie and he leers on every page.
He doesn't go there often... there are a bunch of male predators in his books, but they're the "garden" (!) variety, 50s and 60s domineering types or "let me help you, little lady" cringers (they're still around, of course), and some hard knuckle types that will beat a girl to dead. Cady, Allen and Waxwell are different. Elemental. There's a sick seduction at play there that is transgressive and still disturbing 50 years later. I don't know what JDM was smoking or drinking when he wrote these guys but I bet his fingers felt a thrill on the keyboard with a whiff of sulfur in the air.
Morning for Flamingos is on my list. Hate that u didn’t love A Private Cathedral more.. Picked up Bright Orange for the Shroud after reading your post. Love Trav.
MacDonald and Burke. You are a man after my own heart. I think the Socrates Fortlow books are criminally underappreciated.
They really are. Apparently there's an
HBO movie of the Always Outnumbered!
The first Tray book I read was The Deep Blue Goodbye and Junior Allen was a chiller. The con man as a sexual animal, emphasis on animal. Cady is worse but that's because of Mitchum. I read the book after seeing the movie and he leers on every page.
Absolutely, yeah. It's the one character type in JDM books I find most disturbing.
He doesn't go there often... there are a bunch of male predators in his books, but they're the "garden" (!) variety, 50s and 60s domineering types or "let me help you, little lady" cringers (they're still around, of course), and some hard knuckle types that will beat a girl to dead. Cady, Allen and Waxwell are different. Elemental. There's a sick seduction at play there that is transgressive and still disturbing 50 years later. I don't know what JDM was smoking or drinking when he wrote these guys but I bet his fingers felt a thrill on the keyboard with a whiff of sulfur in the air.
**That I didn’t love**
Morning for Flamingos is on my list. Hate that u didn’t love A Private Cathedral more.. Picked up Bright Orange for the Shroud after reading your post. Love Trav.
What is your favorite in the Trav & Dave Robicheaux series?
Morning for Flamingos and Robicheaux for Dave, too many for Trav...just love that whole series though admittedly there are a couple of bad ones