I bought this little chapbook at ABC Books a couple weeks ago, and when I went back earlier this month and bought a book by Gregory McDonald, I mentioned that Gregory McDonald was one of the big three MacDonald/McDonalds–the other were Ross MacDonald and John D. MacDonald (I said, gesturing to a Travis McGee novel stacked and ready for pricing behind the register). I then told Mrs. E. that I had recently bought a price guide for John D. MacDonald books, this very book–and then I realized I had bought it at ABC Books a couple of weeks earlier, albeit when she was not there.
So. This is a 32-page, saddle-stitched, typeset with a typewriter booklet from 1987, probably not long after MacDonald’s death (at a different hospital in Milwaukee than the hospital where Heather Graham and I were born–he is buried in Milwaukee, and I never visited even though I have been a fan since he was interred). It lists first editions, including first foreign editions in some cases, and prices circa 1987.
How do the prices stack up to modern prices? The Brass Cupcake, his first novel in paperback from 1950, is listed in the book at $40 including notes on a recent sale. You can find it on Ebay from between $30 to $250, and there’s a hardcover edition at $1250 (which is a hardback reprinting of the paperback). So your mileage may vary.
As I have mentioned, gentle reader, I’m a bit afraid of eventually running out of John D. MacDonald books to read. So this book gave me an opprortunity to audit my collection using the Wikipedia entry for John D. MacDonald’s bibliography, the archives of this blog, and my seriously overburdened inexpensive, turn-of-the-century book library software. The shocking results are below the fold.
So I have links to the books I’ve reported to on the blog, and I have emboldened books that I have on the shelves, either read or not.
- 1950 The Brass Cupcake
- 1951 Murder for the Bride
- 1951 Judge Me Not
- 1951 Weep for Me
- 1951 Wine of the Dreamers
- 1952 The Damned
- 1952 Ballroom of the Skies
- 1953 Dead Low Tide
- 1953 The Neon Jungle
- 1953 Cancel All Our Vows
- 1954 All These Condemned
- 1954 Area of Suspicion
- 1954 Contrary Pleasure
- 1955 A Bullet for Cinderella (reprinted as On the Make)
- 1956 Cry Hard, Cry Fast
- 1956 April Evil
- 1956 Border Town Girl reprinted as Five Star Fugitive/ Linda
- 1956 Murder in the Wind (reprinted as Hurricane)
- 1956 You Live Once reprinted as You Kill Me
- 1957 Death Trap
- 1957 The Price of Murder
- 1957 The Empty Trap
- 1957 A Man of Affairs
- 1958 The Deceivers
- 1958 Clemmie
- 1958 The Executioners
- 1958 Soft Touch
- 1959 Deadly Welcome
- 1959 The Beach Girls
- 1959 Please Write for Details
- 1959 The Crossroads
- 1960 Slam the Big Door
- 1960 The Only Girl in the Game
- 1960 The End of the Night
- 1961 Where is Janice Gantry?
- 1961 One Monday We Killed Them All
- 1962 A Key to the Suite
- 1962 A Flash of Green
- 1962 The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything
- 1963 I Could Go On Singing
- 1963 On the Run (2 copies)
- 1963 The Drowner
- 1964 The Deep Blue Good-bye
- 1964 Nightmare in Pink
- 1964 A Purple Place for Dying
- 1964 The Quick Red Fox
- 1965 A Deadly Shade of Gold
- 1964 Bright Orange for the Shroud
- 1965 The House Guests
- 1966 The Last One Left
- 1966 One Fearful Yellow Eye
- 1966 End of the Tiger and Other Stories
- 1968 No Deadly Drug
- 1968 Pale Gray for Guilt
- 1968 The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper
- 1969 Dress Her in Indigo
- 1970 The Long Lavender Look
- 1971 A Tan and Sandy Silence
- 1971 S*E*V*E*N
- 1973 The Scarlet Ruse
- 1973 The Turquoise Lament
- 1975 The Dreadful Lemon Sky
- 1977 Condominium (2 Copies)
- 1978 Other Times, Other Worlds
- 1978 The Empty Copper Sea
- 1979 The Green Ripper
- 1980 Time and Tomorrow
- 1981 Nothing Can Go Wrong
- 1981 Freefall in Crimson (2 Copies)
- 1982 The Good Old Stuff
- 1982 Cinnamon Skin
- 1983 Two
- 1984 One More Sunday
- 1984 More Good Old Stuff
- 1985 The Lonely Silver Rain (2 copies)
- 1986 Barrier Island
- 1986 A Friendship: The Letters of Dan Rowan and John D. MacDonald 1967-1974
- 1987 Reading for Survival
- 1991 Five Complete Travis McGee Novels
- ? A Tan and Sandy Silence and Two Other Great Mysteries
I am really, really light on Travis McGee novels in stand-alone editions (I have a number in omnibus editions). This probably stems from my discovering MacDonald in high school and reading a bunch of them in borrowed library editions, wherein I would then pick up, fairly inexpensively, MacDonald books I had not read–the paperback business originals, mostly. I probably have a couple more on my to-read shelves that I’m not sure of, but I suppose this post will be a guide to what I should hunt out. And even buy on Ebay.
Because, face it, if I’m making a quest to read the Executioner novels and related series that I have on my to-read shelves, I could do better by finishing out the John D. MacDonald ouevre.
Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to run through the links above and re-visit the MacDonald books I’ve read and what I thought of them.
