Two and a half years ago, I posted this:

Reminder #2

Yesterday, Tom Ender published Bob Wallace’s review of an old detective/adventure novel, The Green Ripper, by John D. MacDonald.

(And I just noticed that Lew Rockwell did, too.)

Here I show the original paperback book cover as I remember it when I first read this book around age 14. This was one of the books that got me to finally start reading.

All of MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels have a color in the title, which McGee-as-first-person-narrator eventually works into his narration. What Wallace doesn’t mention is what this title means — a title which I can never forget because it’s so connected to this book cover. The Green Ripper is how McGee and his girlfriend refer to Death personified. Their in-joke is based on a story they heard of a kid who had terrible nightmares about “The Green Ripper” coming to take him away. Eventually his parents figure out that he’s misheard some grown-up talk about The Grim Reaper. When McGee loses his girlfriend to a domestic terrorist ring (this book was written in the late 1970s!) McGee infiltrates the ring to exact his revenge, wishing he could take on The Green Ripper himself.

One day after Raymond Chandler’s birthday, I learn from Writers Almanac that it’s John D. MacDonald’s birthday:

It’s the birthday of mystery novelist John D. MacDonald, born in Sharon, Pennsylvania (1916). He wrote a series of novels, including The Deep Blue Good-By (1964) and Nightmare in Pink (1964), featuring Travis McGee, a beach bum detective who lives on a houseboat that he won in a poker game.

While he was serving in the army during World War II, MacDonald entertained his wife by writing her fictionalized stories in his letters. She liked one story so much that she typed it up and sent it to the magazine Story, where it was published. MacDonald was so surprised and happy that he devoted himself to writing.

He had four months of severance pay when he came home from the Army, so he spent those four months writing seven days a week, 14 hours a day. Everyone but his wife thought he was shell-shocked. By the end of the year, he was making a living selling short stories to pulp fiction magazines. He published 73 stories in 1949 alone.

He used his mystery novels to criticize what he called American junk culture: fast food, bad TV, and land development. He wrote, “I am wary of a lot of things, such as … time clocks, newspapers, mortgages, sermons, miracle fabrics, deodorants … pageants, progress, and manifest destiny.”

Wary of land development and progress, hm? Oh well. Travis McGee’s sidekick was a retired economist whose houseboat was called “The John Maynard Keynes.” I guess that says plenty.