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A review by danmc
The Green Ripper by John D. MacDonald
2.0
The Green Ripper I had some hopes for. I found a leatherbound copy in an old used book store in Boston, where interesting quotes by the author were scotch taped to the ends of aisles because the owner loved him so much. Could I have found that delightful hidden treasure of a book that used book prowlers always hunt?
I wanted to believe the inciting event wasn’t a classic girlfriend-in-the-fridge moment when Travis McGee’s girlfriend, Gretel, was poisoned. Countervailing details included that the death was nothing to do with McGee (she found and recognized a guy involved in a vast conspiracy), and that he read Emily Dickinson poetry at her funeral (MacDonald, 481-2; unattributed, and mistitled “Parting”). The Dickinson seemed off-script and touchingly humanizing to me, a different voice than McGee speaks and thinks in and somehow more than simply exploiting her to start the revenge plot. Nevertheless, her background raised my suspicion, especially when I confirmed that Gretel had only appeared in the previous book.
And I really wished for more of Gretel memories later, because all of his interactions with other women in the story were more screwed up. He spent most of the book infiltrating a Soviet-backed religious cult that is training brainwashed members to become terrorists. The description was probably chilling to people in the 70s.
One of the two women in the group was a former prostitute “reformed” by the cult, but perfectly happy to play comfort woman when she drew the short straw. She was not particularly pretty, buuuut he slept with her anyway. Then at the end when he had to kill his way through all the dozen people at the camp to survive, he started by trying to knock her out but accidentally cracked her skull and killing her. Oops. The other woman in the group he failed, in manly-man fashion, to bring himself to kill (even though she was as bad as the rest) and the plot had to make her accidentally drop a grenade on herself to save him from the inevitable reward for his stupidity. McGee’s buddy the brilliant economist’s dire prediction about the decline of western civilization seems pretty funny looking back now. As a committed Polyanna, I found the pronouncements yet more support for my assertion that people only like Cassandras more than Polyannas because they forgive a Cassandra for being wrong faster than they admit a Polyanna was right. (Like, for example, the original Polyanna, who was spectacularly right in her own story.)
In the end, although the narrative of The Green Ripper avowed that he was deeply scarred and all that, he sailed off into the sunrise with a sexy golddigging widow who’d hit on him hard at Gretel’s wake, while her husband was still alive. Yeah, you’re scarred, McGee, but what the hell are you doing with yourself, you slut?
I wanted to believe the inciting event wasn’t a classic girlfriend-in-the-fridge moment when Travis McGee’s girlfriend, Gretel, was poisoned. Countervailing details included that the death was nothing to do with McGee (she found and recognized a guy involved in a vast conspiracy), and that he read Emily Dickinson poetry at her funeral (MacDonald, 481-2; unattributed, and mistitled “Parting”). The Dickinson seemed off-script and touchingly humanizing to me, a different voice than McGee speaks and thinks in and somehow more than simply exploiting her to start the revenge plot. Nevertheless, her background raised my suspicion, especially when I confirmed that Gretel had only appeared in the previous book.
And I really wished for more of Gretel memories later, because all of his interactions with other women in the story were more screwed up. He spent most of the book infiltrating a Soviet-backed religious cult that is training brainwashed members to become terrorists. The description was probably chilling to people in the 70s.
One of the two women in the group was a former prostitute “reformed” by the cult, but perfectly happy to play comfort woman when she drew the short straw. She was not particularly pretty, buuuut he slept with her anyway. Then at the end when he had to kill his way through all the dozen people at the camp to survive, he started by trying to knock her out but accidentally cracked her skull and killing her. Oops. The other woman in the group he failed, in manly-man fashion, to bring himself to kill (even though she was as bad as the rest) and the plot had to make her accidentally drop a grenade on herself to save him from the inevitable reward for his stupidity. McGee’s buddy the brilliant economist’s dire prediction about the decline of western civilization seems pretty funny looking back now. As a committed Polyanna, I found the pronouncements yet more support for my assertion that people only like Cassandras more than Polyannas because they forgive a Cassandra for being wrong faster than they admit a Polyanna was right. (Like, for example, the original Polyanna, who was spectacularly right in her own story.)
In the end, although the narrative of The Green Ripper avowed that he was deeply scarred and all that, he sailed off into the sunrise with a sexy golddigging widow who’d hit on him hard at Gretel’s wake, while her husband was still alive. Yeah, you’re scarred, McGee, but what the hell are you doing with yourself, you slut?