Tag Archives: birthday

One Monday MacDonald Killed Them All

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This blog has been dormant for a while, and that’s been due to time constraints. I’m bringing it back online. More on that later.

Today, July 24, is the birthday of John D. MacDonald (1916-1986). MacDonald wrote for the pulps and transitioned to paperbacks when the pulps died. (I wish someone would collect all his science fiction.) For today’s birthday post, I want to look at One Monday We Killed Them All.

Dwight McAran beat a girl to death and went to prison for it. He’s about to get out. Dwight is Fenn Hillyer’s brother-in-law. Fenn is a cop. They don’t get along.

Dwight’s sister Meg, Fenn’s wife, thinks Dwight has made some bad but is basically a good person. He just needs the police and powerful businessman whose daughter Dwight killed to get off his back and give him a chance. She’s said he can stay with her and Fenn and everything will eventually be fine.

She couldn’t be more wrong.

Do you think Fenn’s family life is about to get…complicated? Continue reading →

John D. MacDonald at 102

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John D. MacDonald was born on this date, July 24, in 1916.  I’ve written about him before (see here, here, and here).

Although he’s probably best remembered today as the author of the Travis McGee series of men’s adventure thrillers, MacDonald learned his chops in the pulps, albeit during the tail end of the pulp era.

MacDonald’s work is lean and crisp, whether it’s a Travis McGee novel, a stand-alone thriller, or one of his few (but excellent) science fiction tales.  His work is worth seeking out.  And while some of the attitudes expressed may seem dated to anyone who thinks literature began sometime after the year 2000, there’s plenty of philosophy integrated into the action to raise his work above that of pulp hackwork.  This is literature, and deserves to be kept in print.

Raymond Chandler at 130

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Mystery writer Raymond Chandler was born on this date in 1888.  Chandler was, of course, the creator of private eye Phillip Marlowe.

Chandler, along with Dashiell Hammett, were the two writers most responsible for developing the noir school of detective writing.  Chandler’s influence is still felt today.

Times and tastes have changed since the 1930s and 1940s, when most of Chandler’s work was published, and in some circles he’s fallen out of favor with those who feel that people from the past should have the same enlightened views as those of today.

I’m not one of those folks.  I can take the good with the bad.  After all, I’m a big boy and am capable of seeing through eyes not my own.

Chandler’s short fiction was recently collected in hardcovers in Raymond Chandler:  Collected Stories.  (Unfortunately there is no ebook.)  Check it out.  There was no one who wrote quite like Chandler.

Happy Birthday Humphrey Bogart

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Humphrey Bogart was born on Christmas Day 1899.  He passed away from esophageal cancer on January 14, 1957.

Although he made his name starring in now classic films such as Casablanca (still my favorite), Key Largo, The Maltese Falcon, and The Big Sleep, he started out playing hoodlums in many of his early films.  It’s the tough-guy characters he played, both good guys and villains, for which he is best remembered today.

In spite of his reputation as a star of gangster films and film noir, Bogart starred in a number of other roles.  He was married to Lauren Bacall.  They met on the set of To Have and Have Not.  He was 44, and she was 19.  It was her first and his fourth marriage, and would last until Bogey’s death.

Take a moment from your holiday celebrations and raise a glass to his memory.  Bogey’s films are worth watching, even as many acclaimed pictures made by other actors during his lifetime have faded into obscurity.

Here’s a classic scene between Bogart and Bacall from To Have and Have Not:

 

Happy Birthday, Ross MacDonald

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Kenneth Millar, who wrote under the pen name Ross MacDonald, was born today (December 13) in 1915.  He passed away in 1983.

MacDonald is best remembered as the creator of the Los Angeles based private investigator Lew Archer, although he also wrote stand-alone novels as well.  His early work was somewhat derivative of Raymond Chandler, but he soon established his own take on the lone investigator.

MacDonald has been on my radar a long time.  I read the Lew Archer novel The Galton Case when I was in graduate school.  I liked it enough to pick up copies of his books when I came across them in second hand shops.  Over the last few months, I’ve been dipping into The Archer Files, the collected Lew Archer short fiction.

I’m hoping to read more PI fiction next year, and MacDonald will definitely be in the rotation.

Happy Birthday, Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961)

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hammett_reduxDashiell Hammett was born on this day in 1894.  Hammett was arguably the greatest writer of detective fiction in the 20th century.  His lean prose and hardboiled style defined a genre.  Often imitated, he was rarely equaled.

It’s rather surprising that his reputation is built on such a small body of work.  Hammett started out writing for the pulps, particularly Black Mask.  His best known creation was Sam Spade, who was immortalized by Humphrey Bogart in the third film adaptation of The Maltese Falcon.

But it was his earlier creation, an unnamed operative of the Continental Detective Agency that built his reputation.  Narrating his own adventures, the Continental Op’s lean, first-person style created a fictional icon, that of the cynical, hardboiled, first-person PI story.

Hammett was able to bring such verisimilitude to his work because he’d been a Pinkerton operative.  He once said that all of his stories were true.  If anyone has written a book (or a Ph.D. thesis) on that topic, I’d love to see it.

Anyway, pour yourself a shot of something good, raise your glass to Hammett’s memory and legacy, and sit back with one of his books.  You won’t be disappointed.