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<\/a>This book<\/a> is a collection of short stories MacDonald wrote for various slicks throughout the 1950s. Although some of them feature a crime, others do not, so they show the range of things MacDonald could make interesting.<\/p>\nThe collection includes:<\/p>\n
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- “Hangover”<\/b>: As a man awakens from a night of overindulging at a corporate function, he remembers the events that led up to his firing and worse.
<\/li>\n- \t“The Big Blue”<\/b>:An experienced fisherman regrets agreeing to sharing a charter boat with two companions, a blowhard and a weak young man who can’t shake the blowhard. Very similar to Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”.
<\/li>\n- “End of the Tiger”<\/b>: The courtship of a coarse young man and a woman ends after his cruelty to the family’s chicken.
<\/li>\n- “The Trouble with Erica”<\/b>: A business partner protects his young partner from a disastrous courtship with a woman prone to seduction by seducing her.
<\/li>\n- \t\t“Longshot”<\/b>: A clerk at the horse track watches as another crooked clerk runs into trouble when betting out of the drawer.
<\/li>\n- \t\t“Looie Follows Me”<\/b>: A young man in the country has his world turned upside down when his parents take in a troubled youth from the city for a couple of weeks.
<\/li>\n- \t\t“Blurred View”<\/b>: A man who murdered his actress wife is caught when her film making friends recreate the murder in blurry photographs and pretend to blackmail him.
<\/li>\n- \t\t“The Loveliest Girl In The World”<\/b>: A married middle-aged photographer breaks off contact when he gets to close to one of his models.
<\/li>\n- \t\t“Triangle”<\/b>: A businessman encourages a female colleague with whom he’s too close to confess to his wife her attraction to him to convince his wife they’re not having an affair; this is to cover his actual affair with another woman.
<\/li>\n- \t\t“The Bear Trap”<\/b>: A man on a road trip with his wife and children remembers his girlfriend from his youth who was killed by a bear in a cage.
<\/li>\n- \t\t“A Romantic Courtesy”<\/b>: A rich rancher meets a woman he wooed in his youth who abandoned him for a man with prospects and an unhappy marriage.
<\/li>\n- \t\t“The Fast and Loose Money”<\/b>: A pair of skimming angle-shooters are caught by their former commanding officer who is now a Treasury agent.
<\/li>\n- \t\t“The Straw Witch”<\/b>: An assassin thinks of a folk tale told to him by a dying comrade a long time ago as a difficult assignment goes bad.
<\/li>\n- \t\t“The Trap of Solid Gold”<\/b>: A young up-and-coming corporate man finds himself caught up in a vicious fiscal tailspin while trying to keep up the appearance of successful executive on the small salary he makes.
<\/li>\n- \t“Afternoon of the Hero”<\/b>: A famous comedian, atop the world, reacts to a story about him in the media that says he’s very afraid by making light of it, hiding his actual fear.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The collection is very solid, and MacDonald makes the main characters in the stories very approachable. It’s been far too long since I’ve read MacDonald (2012<\/a>? Really?), but it won’t be long until I read more. He’s a joy to read, and the length of his books don’t make you think about how long they are. He balances description, plot, and dialog better than most writers I can think of, and his stories–even his short stories–have pretty interesting plots.<\/p>\n
Recommended.<\/p>\n
Books mentioned in this review:<\/b>
\n - \t“The Big Blue”<\/b>:An experienced fisherman regrets agreeing to sharing a charter boat with two companions, a blowhard and a weak young man who can’t shake the blowhard. Very similar to Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”.