The Green Ripper (Hardcover)

Ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta!

John D. MacDonald's classic mystery of love and revenge, religion and fanaticism "The Green Ripper" may be one of the most chilling entertainment novels I've ever read. Ripper was his seventeenth Travis McGee novel, and MacDonald explores the dark side of religio-terroristic minds with a mastery of craft that left me wondering (in several passages) whether he _identified_ with obsessive minds, or was acerbically satirizing such minds. I think the line between the two is probably thinner than we might -- at first glance -- like to admit.

The story begins with McGee's soulmate dying unexpectedly, and inexplicably, and the early pages follow McGee's realization that her death was not accidental -- but was the result of an assassin's dart. And you can't help but wonder.... whether you would be driven to revenge if _your_ wife or loved one was killed in this way. But MacDonald ratchets it up, here, man because McGee finds that the assassins are linked to a religious-terrorist group based in Ukiah, California.

And once you open up religion in an entertainment novel, you've got some really rich ground to work. A few of the passages spoken by the religious nuts are so convincing and so sincere, you don't know whether to hate them or relate to them. Indeed, McGee even crosses the line becoming one of the group and by sleeping with a [street walker]-turned-gun-toting machine of destruction.

I love this storyline, in that as a writer how obsessive minded are you? Truly great entertainment writers like MacDonald, King, Leonard, Koontz, Mary Higgins Clark (whose Green Ripper blurbs appear on the dust-jacket) know how far you have to push yourself into that world to achieve artistic integrity, and there are times when the difference between being a really good writer and being an obsessive fanatic is subtle as hell.

Still, it's safest just to treat a book like The Green Ripper as a metaphor and to take it at face value; that is, as an entertaining mystery thriller. But it's because this novel holds something deeper, I think, that so many intelligent readers can relate to it. A remarkable gem in the Travis McGee jewelry store. And a novel that I -- for one -- highly recommend to all serious-minded fiction readers.

Stacey

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This is a fast paced book, one of my all-time favorite McGees. I was struck by MacDonald's uncanny accuracy in depicting the terrorist personality way back in 1979. The healthy young American soldiers in superb shape confidently believed their next lives would be vastly improved by destroying the civilization in this one. They disdained, even looked forward to death. One character tells McGee that the terrorists will not "waste" their rockets on military vessels. Blowing up a planeload of civilians containing women and children was far more "productive."

The finale is a fine display of McGee's sniperly abilities, derring-do and just plain luck. (Rambo has nothing on him!) The only thing that dated "The Green Ripper" was McGee's reluctance to treat the female terrorists as anything but "ladies" no matter how fearsome they were. Today no such chivalry (even if misguided) would be allowed.

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