JOHN D. MacDONALD
John Dann MacDonald (born 1918 in Sharon, Pennsylvania - 1986) was one of the 20th Century’s most successful popular authors. Almost 30 when he sold his first short story, he made up for lost time with hundreds of short stories under a variety of names and went on to write 78 books which sold over 70 million copies by one estimate. After that notable birth in our state, he grew up in Utica, New York, attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, quit during his sophomore year, went to Syracuse University, graduated in 1938 (meeting his wife-to-be), and went on to an MBA at Harvard University, ‘39. The Second World War intervened in what could have been a great business career. He entered as a lieutenant, worked for the OSS in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations, and was discharged as a lieutenant colonel in September 1945.
In 1949 he moved his family to Florida, eventually finding Sarasota to be home, and there the writing legend began. After an insanely obsessed stint at breaking into the pulp magazines (which were dying in the postwar years), his first novel, the excellent The Brass Cupcake, was published in 1951. His first Travis McGee mystery, a series that made his name golden and international, was The Deep Blue Good-by, published in 1964. Twenty-one novels make up the series, ending with The Lonely Silver Rain in 1985. They are listed here in alphabetical order by title, but the order in which they were written, which is useful, is appended below. On this page, after the McGee novels, those stand-alone titles still in print are listed.
As popular as he was and remains, MacDonald was also a writer’s writer, acclaimed and claimed as influential by scores of later writers from Kurt Vonnegut to Stephen King, from Carl Hiaasen to Dean Koontz. In his novels the cost is always counted, the right thing to do is the hard thing to do, and people in pain call out for justice and sometimes, always at cost, find it.
(1964) The Deep Blue Good-by
(1964) Nightmare in Pink
(1964) A Purple Place for Dying
(1964) The Quick Red Fox
(1965) A Deadly Shade of Gold
(1965) Bright Orange for the Shroud
(1966) Darker than Amber
(1966) One Fearful Yellow Eye
(1968) Pale Gray for Guilt
(1968) The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper
(1969) Dress Her in Indigo
(1970) The Long Lavender Look
(1971) A Tan and Sandy Silence
(1973) The Scarlet Ruse
(1973) The Turquoise Lament
(1975) The Dreadful Lemon Sky
(1978) The Empty Copper Sea
(1979) The Green Ripper
(1981) Free Fall in Crimson
(1982) Cinnamon Skin
(1985) The Lonely Silver Rain
The Neon Jungle
The Neon Jungle
No writer captured the urban blight that befell postwar America in all its grime and commotion as well as noir legend John D. MacDonald. The Neon Jungledepicts a world in which the bright lights belie the turbulent lives of a lost generation.
Introduction by Dean Koontz
The smell of warm gin hovers over a whole section of town. The threat of violence hangs in the air. And the neighborhood kids know all about drugs, knives, and back-alley beatings long before they’re pushed into high school by weary truant officers.
This is simply reality for the family that runs Varaki Quality Market. Its patriarch, Gus Varaki, is doing all he can to keep his business afloat after his beloved middle child, Henry, is killed in action. But his oldest son is at a crossroads, his teenage daughter has been seduced by a rough crowd, and one of his employees is running a racket of his own. Only Henry’s despondent widow, Bonny, sees the awful truth—and the deadly plot hanging over all of their heads.
Praise for John D. MacDonald
“John D. MacDonald was the great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.”—Stephen King
“My favorite novelist of all time . . . No price could be placed on the enormous pleasure that his books have given me.”—Dean Koontz