Weird, isn’t it, that Raymond Chandler’s birthday should be followed the next day by the birthday of yet another giant in 20th-century crime fiction, John D. MacDonald? Yet, there it is. The Pennsylvania-born creator of “salvage expert” Travis McGee would have turned 90 years old today. However, he died in 1986, not long after the release of his 21st McGee novel, The Lonely Silver Rain.
In 1984, Mystery Scene editor Ed Gorman asked the author what he would like his epitaph to say. MacDonald’s response: “He hung around quite a while, entertained the folk, and was stopped quick and clean when the right time came.”
READ MORE: “John D. MacDonald’s Lush Landscape of Crime,” by Jonathan Yardley (The Washington Post).
Monday, July 24, 2006
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