I can always rely on John D. MacDonald to provide an intense and frightening story. In One Monday We Killed Them All he provides the story but then he slows the book down with some ponderous ramblings on law enforcement and the penal system as the main character, police detective Fenn Hillyer does some internal searching for the best way to handle his brother-in-law, Dwight McAran.

McAran has just been released from five years in prison and Fenn can see that he is bitter and angry. Fenn’s wife only sees the brother that she helped to raise. She believes he has been given a raw deal and that now he will settle down and become a model citizen. But Dwight McAran is a psychopath who has already slapped one woman to death and raped another. He has joined forces with some other criminals and they are obviously planning something big.

Although One Monday We Killed Them All isn’t my favorite John D. MacDonald book, it was a solid hard-boiled story that led to an exciting climax. There was perhaps a little too much musing on legal ethics and I thought that the wife was rather too oblivious to her brother’s actual personality to be believable, but as always, if it’s a trip to the dark side that you are looking for, you can’t go wrong with John D. MacDonald. ( )

Hard, bitter MacDonald. ( )

MacDonald is reaching his stride as a story teller. As always his stories are about explorations of the human psyche and soul. This is the story of a policeman and his wife. She grew up in the hill country and after the death of her parents raised her half brother. It turns out he was an evil soul and he ended up convicted of manslaughter after beating a banker’s daughter to death.
The book starts at the time he is released from prison. His brother in law, the police detective is picking him up from penitentiary at his release. He is to come home to live with his sister and the policeman. The policeman accepts that obligation out of respect for his wife who can’t believe her brother is a bad man. He served his whole sentence so wasn’t on parole. He had sworn to get revenge on the town that had convicted him and sent him to prison.
The siser wouldn’t accept the evil intentions of her brother.
Through the eyes of the ploiceman we see that the brother continues to engage in violent and antisocial acts, even raping a young woman in the privacy of her own home.
The story evolves to the plot her brother and acquaintances he made in prison plot major mayhem. They stage a prison riot and arrange the escape of 4 convicts during the riot. They then go to hid out in the hill country.
The story revolves around the detectives efforts to apprehend his brother in law and his wife’s ambivalence about her brother’s nature.
The subplot is the evolution of the sister’s personality into being more objective about her brother, and the detective’s efforts to become a warmer person.
While the excitement is well handled and described the more lasting impression on me was the impact it had on the personalities of the characters. ( )

It couldn't sit on my shelf forever with a title like this--but not too surprisingly, it doesn't deliver all the goods. I think this is the third MacDonald book in a row I have read that has a scene where the bad guys spill most of their plans in unlikely conversations with each other when they don't know the book's hero is around (or maybe he's around, but unconscious, as in the last Travis McGee I read.) The hero here is a detective in a small city whose wife's half-brother happens to be a murderer (or manslaughterer, to be more exact, or womanslaughterer to be precise.) He has just been released from prison and is definitely up to something. The story follows the detective as he tries to figure out what it is. This book does have some interesting insights on policing and living with a certain level of corruption, but the only way it grabs you is with overemotional schmaltz--which tends to work for me, I must admit. The plot builds up to a big finale, but not quite as big as MacDonald could have made it. At the end, you feel vaguely relieved that it is all over, and not nearly so depressed as reading the rest of this dark, cynical book makes you feel. ( )

JDM has done it again! His characters are solid and vivid and the story line keeps you going because sometimes JDM goes places with the story writers are not supposed to go. He writes as a cop better than he does as a beach bum, and his observations in this piece precede Travis McGees tomes. ( )