The Red Book Club

Read, Eat and Drink!

Upcoming Events

June will take us to Melissa's house to discuss The Green Ripper by John MacDonald

Beautiful girls always grace the Florida beaches, strolling, sailing, relaxing at the many parties on Travis McGee's houseboat, The Busted Flush. McGee was too smart - and had been around too long - for many of them to touch his heart. Now, however, there was Gretel. She had discovered the key to McGee - to all of him - and now he had something to hope for. Then, terribly, unexpectedly, she was dead. From a mysterious illness, or so they said. But McGee knew the truth, that Gretel had been murdered. And now he was out for blood...

John D(ann) MacDonald was among the last major writers to serve time in the pulp magazine "school of hard knocks", along with Ray Bradbury, Louis L'Amour and Evan Hunter/Ed McBain. He went from penny-a-word pulpster to million-dollar-a-year doyen, creator of Max (Cape Fear) Cady and Travis McGee but not overnight! John D. (affectionate short form) was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, on 24th July 1916. According to Francis M. Nevins, Jr., MacDonald's father was a "strong-willed alcoholic who rose Horatio Alger-like from humble origins to become a top executive at a firearms company in Utica, New York." (Revised introduction to The Good Old Stuff [Gold Medal edition, November 1963].) The junior MacDonald contracted mastoiditis and scarlet fever at twelve years of age, leaving him bedridden for a year. He turned to books for comfort and intellectual escapism. MacDonald was educated at Utica Free Academy (graduation: 1933), the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance (1934-35), Syracuse University, New York (1936-38: BS degree in Business Administration), and Harvard Graduate School of Business (1939: MBA). He married Dorothy Mary Prentiss in 1937; their only child, Johnny, was born in 1940.