Barrier Island

Rating:
Summary: MacDonald makes literature out of real estate swindle !
Review: Despite being a rather well-read mystery/thriller buff, we're new to MacDonald, having somehow missed his Travis McGee character. We picked up "Island" on a whim, not understanding either that it is the author's last work prior to his death nor that it is not a series book, but rather a "slice of life" story about a real estate partner who smells a rat and decides to set a trap for it.

Ostensibly, the tale is about good ol' Mississippi boy Tuck Loomis, who makes money out of real estate developments that border on shady. Loomis' life in general is not an attractive one as he wheedles his way with money to grease the skids for his various schemes, all the while cheating on his wife, now an invalid barely alive (so now he makes it with the nurses...). His latest scheme is to buy up a barrier island, "sell" all kinds of expensive lots (mostly to cronies), and make elaborate plans for million-dollar estates, so that when the government eventually takes over the land as necessary for environmental reasons, he'll make a windfall on the condemnation. He hires Gibbs/Rowley, a reputable local realtor, to "facilitate" the deeds, basically part of the scam to make everything look on the up and up. Bern Gibbs doesn't mind the questionable deal, but his partner Wade Rowley does, leading to not only their split-up, but ere the novel reaches its climax, several men are dead and the US Attorney / FBI start to realize the true story.

At first, this book meandered so bad we thought it might not have any plot. Then as the real estate stuff started to make sense, as we learned more about bad boy Tuck, and came to appreciate what a good guy Rowley was, we got hooked. And when it was all over, we realized this slim book was really a morality tale, with the poignant descriptions of local color and insights into the desires of men and women all bonus materials just thrown in for free! Gee, maybe that's what great writing is all about -- the author quietly talks to us about life, family, and the human condition, while he wraps his lecture around an entertaining story about bad boys seemingly getting rich. For those who have read the 21 McGee stories, they might wonder where this one came from. To us, we wonder how he ever got started on those!!


Rating:
Summary: Style and conviction
Review: I have the terrible feeling that I should like this book more than the earlier Travis McGee novels. Fortunately or unfortunately, that is not the case.

Barrier Island provides some of the richest characterizations and most complicated plot points to be found in one of his books. I really admire what he did here and had he not died soon after publication, it would have been interesting to see where this new direction had taken him.

I think that how much you like this book will come down to a question of taste. I enjoy the simplicity and the hard-boiled mystery elements of a book like Bright Orange for the Shroud more than I enjoyed Barrier Island. The reader is required to work a lot harder in this book than in some of the others and the plot is occasionally so complicated that I had to go back to remind myself what I had just read.

In short: Do read if you are a MacDonald fan already. Even if you are not, if this is your cup of tea then it would be a perfect cup of tea. Someone looking for more standard hard-boiled detective material should pick up a Travis McGee instead.

Rating:
Summary: The Master's last work: Pulp becomes Art
Review: I'm an unashamed MacDonald acolyte. A completely biased fan. Seek objectivity elsewhere.

This is MacDonald's last published novel. He died soon and suddenly before paperback publication of this swiftly and briskly told entertainment, full of the utterly believable characterizations for which MacDonald has always been particularly esteemed.

MacDonald has always been a writer's writer. From Stephen King to Dean Koontz and just about every kind of popular novelist from this half of the century (and from more than a few highly-admired literary novelists), you can read unstinting praise for MacDonald. His work influenced and inspired over a generation of popular novelists, and in his particular specialty, the procedural crime thriller, he may well be peerless.

In Barrier Island, the plot may keep you turning the pages (another MacDonald specialty: by the time he reached his artistic maturity his tales unfolded with the spooky, organic precision of an amoeba digesting a bit of flotsam; not a seam or dumb loose end to be found); but it's the mastery of language (and through it the mastery of character) that makes the page-turning worth doing: in this, his last novel, MacDonald had honed his prose down to an almost austere simplicity that camoflages his enormous craft. MacDonald advanced as a writer through the evolution of his language. Even in some of his early novels there are moments of Art, with a capital "A," but here, in this last work, there is Art everywhere. The irony of this clean prose revealing the utter messiness of human affairs (about which MacDonald knew more than most), is part of what makes this novel Art, not just another light entertainment.

And it is this very quality of language that will have the last page resonating in your head and heart long after you've closed the back cover.

Rating:
Summary: Part Larry McMurtry, part Steinbeck, part murder mystery
Review: This is my first John MacDonald book and I was impressed by the great character development. This is not your standard murder mystery - instead it reminds me of Larry McMurtry's "life is full of tragedy" theme. The greed of two men causes a chain reaction of events that end up with one of them being killed and life forever changed for a whole host of people.

Is it a mystery? No - the reader knows exactly what happens and no one is looking for the real murderers. What it is is well-written and interesting and, ultimately it struck me as realistic.

From what I've read of the other reviews, this was not MacDonald's standard fare - but I am still intrigued enough to look for some more.

One thing I was terrible disappointed in - and this is not a reflection of MacDonald, but rather Fawcett Books, the publisher - there were massive amounts of typos in the book - sometimes at least one on every page for 15-20 pages at a stretch - misspellings, quotation marks left off, names not capitalized. It got to be distracting and then a big joke. How unprofessional of Fawcett to send such a fine book to press with so many mistakes!

Rating:
Summary: A desperate search for a plot!
Review: This is the first book I've read by this author and it will be quite a stretch to get me to read another. Only through sheer willpower did I convince myself to read halfway through this text in desperate search for a plot. The plot finally started to reveal itself, but it was so weak, I couldn't believe anyone would use it as the basis for a novel. I've got to confess - I never finished the book. I NEVER quit midstream in a book (I attacked Moby Dick three times before finishing it!), but I finally conceded that I had better uses for my time than trying to plod through the rest of this weak effort.