Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Lurid Color

Nightmare in Pink by John D. Macdonald

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I’ve been haphazardly making my way through John D. Macdonald’s Travis McGee series, which explains how I am just now arriving at the second McGee story. While I found the first McGee book, The Deep Blue Good-By, extremely affecting and well-written, this follow-up is much different. Nightmare in Pink is a lurid romp with an absolutely outrageous plot. Whereas McGee is usually something of a noble figure in this book he is more of an anti-hero. Usually Macdonald’s plot are complex and intertwined while the […]

McGee the Magnificent

The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper by John D. MacDonald

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This installment of the Travis McGee series starts with him joining several associates on a literal salvaging operation. It’s an apt metaphor for McGee’s normal exploits. For the unfamiliar, McGee is not quite a private eye, but he can be hired to find anything. His fee? Half of whatever he recovers. It’s a lifestyle that allows for plenty of relaxation aboard McGee’s houseboat, the Busted Flush, plenty of drinking, and plenty of time with the lovely ladies who can’t seem to stop throwing themselves at […]

A war, depression, and a sociopath. And three other books not about the 2016 election.

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64. Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 by Ian W. Toll (5 stars) The Pacific Crucible examines the naval war in the Pacific theater of WWII from Pearl Harbor to Midway, and traces its origins back to the naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan’s seminal book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. This is the first in a nonfiction trilogy about the Pacific theater of WWII. The second, The Conquering Tide, was published in 2015. I think it’s a fairly stellar book about […]

Life Aboard the Busted Flush

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Travis McGee will confound your expectations. An unlikely hero for a detective novel, or any kind of novel at that, John D. MacDonald’s most famous creation is a man who has figured himself out. All it takes for him to be completely happy is a quiet life about his houseboat, the Busted Flush, with good food, good drink, and some occasional female companionship on his terms. To finance this life of Reilly, McGee takes work only when he has to, and it’s an odd line […]



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