A biography of John D Macdonald a prolific author of crime and suspense novels. I was interested to read it because I wanted to get an insight into the life of an author like Macdonald who was able to sit down in front of his typewriter and just write: 8 hours a day, which must have been just like turning up to the office. He wrote at a time before computers put this facility in the hands of many more people. One wonders where he got his inspiration, where he got his ideas to write so many books: well over 60, plus many more short stories. The book is not able to give much information on the inner workings of Macdonald's mind, but it does a good job in explaining the situation of a person who wanted to earn his living from writing.

The biography follows his life in chronological order. It tells of his education, his restlessness, but finally his award of an MBA at Harvard university in 1939. He had got married in 1937 and with a family to support, needed to earn a living by his writing, hence his discipline of sitting down in front of his typewriter to churn out and send off his short stories to the pulp magazines. There were many more magazines in the crime/detective genre being published and so that is the genre in which Macdonald wrote, with a brief flirtation with science fiction. He had his first standalone novel "The Brass Cupcake" published in 1950 and then there were 3/4 novels published every year until in 1957 when he had a big success with 'The Executioners' which was filmed as Cape Fear. Hugh Merrill says that Macdonald had built up a steady following of readers, who knew what they were going to get with a Macdonald crime novel: a well written entertainment. Many more novels followed before he started the first of his Travis McGee series in 1964, which really hit pay dirt.

Merrill only briefly refers to the books (there would be far too many to analyse in any depth) being more intent on putting his career into the context of his life and times. He does however compare him to other writers in the genre, particularly with his Travis McGee books, which he claims are more sympathetic to female characters than most of the hard bitten crime novels published at that time. Macdonald was also anti-racist but struggled to find a voice for this in his work. He was also interested in the environment, particularly in Florida where he eventually made his home and some of this is reflected in his novels. There are plenty of quotes from his letters and some from the forwards to his novels in a book that seems well researched, however I did not get much of a feel for Macdonald as a person, as the biography seems more of a paper exercise.

Macdonald was one of those popular authors that at times attracted the attention of literary critics. He sold over 70 million books and so he could hardly be ignored. I have only read one of his early science fiction novels, but found his writing to be more than competent. I am tempted to try one of his novels from the extremely popular Travis McGee series. This biography is useful background material and so 3.5 stars. ( )