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#276536 in Books 2013-10-08 2013-10-08Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 8.00 x .40 x 5.00l, .44 #File Name: 0812984099256 pages | File size: 42.Mb

John D. MacDonald : The Green Ripper: A Travis McGee Novel before purchasing it in order to gage whether or not it would be worth my time, and all praised The Green Ripper: A Travis McGee Novel:

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Not The Best T. McGee, But Better Than I RememberedBy Paige TurnerI set out last year to reread all the John D. McDonald Travis McGee novels in order. (Highly recommended to new readers or old friends who'd like to see Travis again.) I had been a big fan since the late 1960s. The one book I had serious misgivings about was The Green Ripper, and I didn't look forward to rereading it. My misgivings were: 1. In most of the books, Travis (knight errant, slightly bemused observer of human foibles, angry foe of rapacious greed, fierce and tough adversary) ventured to recover things wrongly taken from innocent people. This book, though, has Travis seeking personal vengeance against a large number of people, most of whom, while detestable, were not directly at fault for his loss. 2. The climax was overly bloody, and Travis lost his ethical and moral footing. 3. For an extended period, Travis is undercover and captive in the compound of a politico-religious cult. The cultists are unpleasant company,and McGee himself seems changed in the experience, and not for the better. 4. The ending is way too Rambo. 5. Travis's bloody vengeance is prompted by the murder of Gretel Howard, girlfriend and love of his life.That last misgiving involves probably the most serious literary offense by McDonald, whom I think of as a great craftsman of mysteries. Gretel was introduced in The Empty Copper Sea, the previous T. McGee book, and spoken of by Travis as the woman who might settle him down (my words, his implication.) But a woman who threatens to settle McGee threatens also to end the series, which can't be allowed. The reader understands poor Gretel was born to die. And sadly, MacDonald spends little effort in either book establishing Gretel as a character. We know McGee loves her because he tells us so, not because we're shown the qualities that make Gretel worthy of his love. The portrayal is flat and unexceptional. McGee has fallen in love, but we haven't. Thus when Gretel dies, we don't mourn her, we only note her death as a gimmick to jump-start the plot. That lack of emotional connection distances us from the horror of McGee's actions.The several books proceeding The Green Ripper showed an increasingly morose McGee pondering the meaning of life and the approach of the Grim Reaper. I wonder if the author himself feared that the McGee books had become repetitive. So many plots (like The Empty Copper Sea and A Tan and Sandy Silence) involved evil and greedy Florida businessmen and speculators running roughshod over little people. Did MacDonald, in the last few years of his life, sense he was running out of time and ideas? McGee's sharp deviation into bloody revenge against religious terrorists might have been MacDonald's effort to creatively shake things up. If so,I respect that, and forgive him.After my first reading decades ago,I found myself hoping for McGee's recovery and redemption and for his return to form as one of the great series heroes in fiction history. After rereading it, I see the book, with its bloody climactic escape, as a violent effort to escape the creative doldrums. As such it is a critical turning point for a fascinating character who might otherwise have simply faded away while doing the same ol' same ol'.I look forward to rereading the final three T. McGee books for a new assessment of whether MacDonald was able in the end to save Travis's soul.3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Tough reviewBy CottonmouthIt's tough to review a book I first read almost thirty years ago; cold, rainy weather back then. Familiar with JDM,I picked this one up and found it to be my favorite in all of that series. I haunt libraries the way sadness hangs back but haunts the pages of this work. Set the publication date at 1979, and in all that has happened since, it isalmost visionary. As it is basically a fiction of soldiering, special ops, and aysmmetrical warfare, etc. Ifyou miss the Georges Santayana quote on the epigram page, you have missed the book's whole point. It is ugly, itis relentless, it is bloody. It is supposed to be. One man's war of vengeance on the terrorists who murdered onewoman. A decade removed from 9/11, how close to the bone it cuts-- defining the mindless optimism evil seems alwaysto possess in those who work at it, for whatever reasons. For any reasons.Those sunnily disposed should avoid this book. You'll put it down with the smell of gunpowder in your nose, and grave dirt under your fingernails.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. I read some of the negative reviews of this book and am glad I ignored themBy david c tassellI have been flying through the Travis Magee books since I discovered them early this year, enjoying all of them. I read some of the negative reviews of this book and am glad I ignored them. Several reviewers felt the Magee in Green Ripper was not the same Magee as in previous stories, but the reason for this change in his character is imminently believable and actually welcome in my view. He did just what one would have wanted him to do based upon his loss. There was an element of Jack Reacher (perhaps this was a bit of an inspiration to Lee Child in the development of the Reacher character) in his actions, but I felt that they made sense. I highly recommend the book and I am on to the next in the series.

From a beloved master of crime fiction, The Green Ripper is one of many classic novels featuring Travis McGee, the hard-boiled detective who lives on a houseboat. Travis McGee has known his share of beautiful girls, but true love always passed him by—until Gretel. Life aboard the Busted Flush has never been so sweet. But suddenly, Gretel dies of an unidentified illness—or so he’s told. Convinced that the woman who stole his heart has been murdered, McGee finds himself pursuing a less-than-noble cause: revenge. “To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.”—Kurt Vonnegut McGee has lost not only the love of his life but also his last hope for stability. Soon grief turns to blinding rage. So when he finds the people responsible for Gretel’s death, McGee goes off the rails—and off the grid, three thousand miles from home. McGee emerges in the woods as Tom McGraw, a fisherman looking for his long-lost daughter. This mysterious newcomer starts knocking off targets one by one. But as he pursues his single-minded crusade for justice, he becomes more and more unhinged. McGee has spent his life saving other people, but now he’ll need to find the strength to save himself—before he loses his mind. Features a new Introduction by Lee Child

From Booklist*Starred * If The Empty Copper Sea is the most romantic book in the Travis McGee series, The Green Ripper is, far and away, the darkest. As it happens very near the novel’s beginning, and as it’s announced on the dust jacket, it’s no spoiler to reveal that Gretel Howard, the love of McGee’s life, the woman poised to take him away from the lazy hedonism of the marina, dies a sudden and violent death, the victim of a poison dart, the kind Soviet agents affix to the tips of umbrellas. But why Gretel, who was working as a physical trainer and tennis coach at an innocuous fat farm near Fort Lauderdale? Apparently because she accidentally saw a man at the farm whom she recognized as being part of a religious cult that once recruited her former sister-in-law. But that still doesn’t make much sense to Trav or his big-brained pal Meyer until a couple of federal agents show up and fill in some of the blanks: The Church of the Apocrypha is a religious cult, yes, but it’s also a heavily armed terrorist organization intent on fomenting class warfare in the U.S. Trav, of course, is sworn off any attempt to investigate the group, but he has other ideas—a campaign far different from his usual Robin Hoodish ventures: “This time, my dead love, I am not doing my knightly routine. I have shelved that as inappropriate for the occasion. The old tin-can knight had too many compunctions, scruples, whatevers. For this caper, I am the iceman. I have come here and brought the ice. It is a delivery service. One time only.” Shirking his McGee identity and signing his houseboat over to Meyer, Trav goes on the road, landing in Northern California and allowing himself to be captured by the cult and then joining their motley crew of terrorists, 10 men and 2 women trained to kill and devoted to a perverted ideal. He displays enough strength and knowledge of weaponry to become an asset to the group, holding back just enough of his skills to save for later. Then the bloodbath begins: “With the ghastly, toothy grin of the skull head of death looking over my shoulder, I was intensely alive.” This is a new kind of life for our Travis, however, and the contrast between the knight errant, helper of the meek, and this new, determined angel of death is shocking both to the reader and to Travis himself. Robert B. Parker fans will notice the similarity between The Green Ripper and Parker’s A Catskill Eagle (1985), in which embarks on his own blood-soaked, vengeance-fueled journey. But Ripper is darker, more focused on the releasing of the hero’s inner demon. Without the near-idyllic romance between Trav and Gretel, portrayed in The Empty Copper Sea, this personal transformation might not work, but in the context of the earlier book, it strikes a profound chord in anyone who has lusted to take a pound of flesh from an unforgiving world. Beyond the personal Götterdämmerung, the novel proves remarkably prescient about the coming of an age of idealism-driven terrorism. Speaking through his economist- philosopher Meyer (and more than 30 years before 9/11), MacDonald prophetically describes the contemporary terrorist mind-set, recognizing that one man—even one as determined as Travis—can’t stop the tide of history. At the end of the novel, McGee is carrying psychic wounds deeper than ever before. Stay tuned for the series’ three concluding novels to see if those wounds heal. --Bill Ott Praise for John D. MacDonald and the Travis McGee novels “The great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.”—Stephen King “My favorite novelist of all time . . . All I ever wanted was to touch readers as powerfully as John D. MacDonald touched me. No price could be placed on the enormous pleasure that his books have given me. He captured the mood and the spirit of his times more accurately, more hauntingly, than any ‘literature’ writer—yet managed always to tell a thunderingly good, intensely suspenseful tale.”—Dean Koontz “To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.”—Kurt Vonnegut “A master storyteller, a masterful suspense writer . . . John D. MacDonald is a shining example for all of us in the field. Talk about the best.”—Mary Higgins Clark “A dominant influence on writers crafting the continuing series character . . . I envy the generation of readers just discovering Travis McGee, and count myself among the many readers savoring his adventures again.”— “One of the great sagas in American fiction.”—Robert B. Parker “Most readers loved MacDonald’s work because he told a rip-roaring yarn. I loved it because he was the first modern writer to nail Florida dead-center, to capture all its languid sleaze, racy sense of promise, and breath-grabbing beauty.”—Carl Hiaasen “The consummate pro, a master storyteller and witty observer . . . John D. MacDonald created a staggering quantity of wonderful books, each rich with characterization, suspense, and an almost intoxicating sense of place. The Travis McGee novels are among the finest works of fiction ever penned by an American author and they retain a remarkable sense of freshness.”—Jonathan Kellerman “What a joy that these timeless and treasured novels are available again.”—Ed McBain “Travis McGee is the last of the great knights-errant: honorable, sensual, skillful, and tough. I can’t think of anyone who has replaced him. I can’t think of anyone who would dare.”—Donald Westlake “There’s only one thing as good as reading a John D. MacDonald novel: reading it again. A writer way ahead of his time, his Travis McGee books are as entertaining, insightful, and suspenseful today as the moment I first read them. He is the all-time master of the American mystery novel.”—John SaulFrom the Publisher7 1-hour cassettes

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