The Damned

by John D. MacDonald

The Damned, one of many classic novels from crime writer John D. MacDonald, the beloved author of Cape Fear and the Travis McGee series, is now available as an eBook. At a ferry stop along the Rio Conchos, the line of cars waiting to cross stretches to the horizon. Because of a bureaucratic blunder, the boat has been stalled, with no relief in sight for the drivers—many of them American, many growing impatient to reach the border. That kind of tension can do funny things to a person’s head . . . to a trembling killer looking over his shoulder . . . to a married man escorting a beautiful stranger on an ill-advised sabbatical . . . to a honeymooner determined to have her love returned. Many others are waiting, too. Some are desperate for a second chance. And it’s only a matter of time until someone snaps—especially when they’ve all been pushed too far under the scorching Mexican sun. Features a new Introduction by Dean Koontz Praise for John D. MacDonald “ The great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.”—Stephen King “My favorite novelist of all time.”—Dean Koontz “To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.”—Kurt Vonnegut “A master storyteller, a masterful suspense writer . . . John D. MacDonald is a shining example for all of us in the field. Talk about the best .”—Mary Higgins Clark

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Crime, Noir, Novels, Mystery Thriller

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

John D. MacDonald was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, and educated at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Syracuse and Harvard, where he took an MBA in 1939. During WW2, he rose to the rank of Colonel, and while serving in the Army and in the Far East, sent a short story to his wife for sale, successfully. He served in the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations. After the war, he decided to try writing for a year, to see if he could make a living. Over 500 short stories and 70 novels resulted, including 21 Travis McGee novels.

Following complications of an earlier heart bypass operation, MacDonald slipped into a coma on December 10 and died at age 70, on December 28, 1986, in St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was survived by his wife Dorothy (1911-1989) and a son, Maynard.

In the years since his death MacDonald has been praised by authors as diverse as Stephen King, Spider Robinson, Jimmy Buffett, Kingsley Amis and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.. Thirty-three years after his passing the Travis McGee novels are still in print.

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never read a John D. MacDonald novel before, so when I saw this ebook on sale, I thought I'd switch gears a bit from my usual reading fare and give him a try. I'm sure glad I did! The man could definitely write.
The Damned is a psychological thriller about a group of people who come together at a Mexican ferry crossing near the U.S border. The ferry is delayed, and everyone is forced to wait in the stifling mexican heat.. a criminal on the run, young newlyweds and his mother, an aging comedian desperate to make the big time, a local rancher, among others, and as the ferry is further delayed, the temperature rises, tempers flare and...well...stuff happens.
Concise, expertly paced, stylish, the epilogue alone was worth the price of admission. I'm looking forward to reading more of MacDonald's bountiful works.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Death Trap, first published in 1957, was a standard crime paperback. MacDonald here did not focus on a dozen different backstories, climbing the corporate ladder, or the high price of infidelity. He uses Hugh McReedy as his amateur detective in a small town where he is a stranger and everyone stands against him from the local police to the local leather-clad juvenile delinquents to the murdered girl’s broken-hearted father. The opening set up serves as the lead in to Hugh’s moral redemption and the passage of time.

The opening finds Hugh in Spain working as an engineer on a large construction project. He is a swashbuckling man about town, eager for his six weeks off to spend in Mexico with a woman mature enough to know it’s just a good time and nothing permanent. But he’s got guilt. He was once working a project in a small town, Warrentown, where he met Vicki, fell for her, and wooed her till a fateful night in a cheap motel when he failed to respond to her exclamation of love and now regrets leaving her behind.

It seems Hugh’s chance to re-open the romance comes in the form of his playing a knight in shining armor. Vicki is devoted to her odd brother who has, according to the news, been tried and convicted for murdering a young girl and now is just ten days from the electric chair. Vicki knows her brother is innocent, but is now shunned in this small town. Off Hugh rides to the rescue, with the ulterior goal of winning back her heart by his virtuous deeds.

Although the romance plays the opening gambit here, the tension between the two really isn’t maintained throughout. Rather, it’s a story of an out of town amateur detective bucking common sense and ducking it out with the local enforcer and the juvenile delinquents. There are a few solid fight scenes here as well as a dogged investigation against all odds.

[Benjamin Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hugh MacReedy has just returned to the US from Europe where he has spent two and a half years working on the construction of some military airfields. He’s ready to take a nice two-month vacation when he happens across a newspaper article describing the upcoming execution of the brother of an old girlfriend. Seems the man has been convicted of the rape and murder of a young woman, a local promiscuous tease of a girl. Hugh goes back to the small town where it all took place, gets back together with his old girlfriend, and begins investigating the circumstances of the crime.

This novel was MacDonald's nineteenth novel, first published in February 1957. The plot is a fairly straight-forward murder investigation by a non-professional. Hugh is a construction engineer, not a private investigator. But he is an intelligent fellow and is very good at pounding the pavement, speaking with those involved, and putting together the subtle clues to solve the mystery and determine the real rapist/murderer. In fact, he identifies the culprit pretty early, about half-way through the book, and the story changes from a sleuthing mystery to more of a thriller. Hugh, working now with several other townspeople, must find actual evidence in order to grant a stay of execution for the wrongfully convicted brother of his girlfriend and bring the real killer to justice.

This novel was written in the early prime of MacDonald’s writing career. Before the Travis McGee novels, which largely took over his writing life, his stand-alones showed a genuine progression as he matured as a writer and this one clearly shows his prowess with the written word. The main character, Hugh MacReady is a typical MacDonald protagonist. He is tall, strong, tanned, and women find him attractive. He is a professional man doing man's work. But he is also different in that he committed a major blunder in his early days, having wooed, bedded, and then abandoned his girlfriend. She was nothing more than another notch in his belt. Thus, after returning to that same small town after three years, his rekindling of that relationship, genuine this time, represents a correction of his moral flaw. This moral theme is seen often in MacDonald’s prose.

For those readers who tend to read only Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald, I recommend pursuing his other novels as well. For the most part, they are real treats. As this one is.

[Sincere W. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of all the authors that I admire, John D. MacDonald is the one I would have liked to have a meal with most. He had a wisdom about man's motivations that few authors can rival. That wisdom really comes across in this novel.

The situation at the heart of this story is a delayed river crossing. The delay forces an assortment of characters into a confined area. The result is a riveting tale that touches on love, maturity, loyalty, degradation and derangement.

There's sex, murder, betrayal and malice. There are characters that feel realer than people you meet in ordinary life. And there are ideas here that will leave you changed having encountered them.

The novel is only about 180 pages long, and the pages go fast. Yet the story is dense; you won't be left with that unsated feeling relatively common of shorter novels. You'll feel "full" by the time you hit the back cover.

What I love about this story is how masterfully the characters are constructed... torn apart... and then reshaped. None of the characters leave this story the way they came into it. Some break good and some break bad. But they all change in some profound way.

The only thing I didn't like - and the reason I settled on 4 stars instead of 5 - is that some of the subplots are much more engaging than others. It gave parts of the novel an unevenness, and you're tempted to skip ahead to get back to the "good" plot lines. The irony is even the "bad" plot lines are very good. Its just that, like I said, some are better than others.

This is an excellent read.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The narrator-protagonist of this entertaining story, Hugh MacReedy, is a guy in “the construction game,” as he puts it, who has just finished a long assignment in Spain and is planning to spend the next two months on a fishing trip. But when he spots a familiar name in a Chicago newspaper article about a young man soon to be executed for murder, he can’t ignore it. The convicted killer is the brother of a former lover, Victoria Landy, whom he jilted before he went to Spain, and he hasn’t been able to get her out of his mind. “You never forget the chances you have missed, the good things you have thrown away.”

So he puts his fishing trip on hold and goes to see Vicky. She’s convinced that her brother is innocent, although everyone else in town agrees he’s guilty. Seeing a chance to atone for treating Vicky badly, Hugh promises to look into the crime and try to save her brother from the electric chair. But the clock is ticking: the execution date is only ten days away.

When it comes to detective work, Hugh is an amateur. But he’s determined, and he has good intuition. The condemned man’s lawyer recognizes that and advises him, “Just keep blundering and stumbling around, Hugh. You have a great talent for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong way, and coming up with a right answer.” Sure enough, he soon zeroes in on someone he believes was the real killer. But how to prove it?

Death Trap is a fast-paced mystery. As always, MacDonald is great at creating believable characters. Like MacDonald’s iconic hero Travis McGee, Hugh is a man’s man and something of a knight in shining armor. MacDonald has few peers in describing fights, and Hugh gets into his share of them. Some of MacDonald’s descriptions of women feel a bit dated, but overall his observations about life and love ring true.

I enjoyed Death Trap, and I think most other mystery fans will too.

[Lee Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man, John D. MacDonald was a fucking master (writer, not actual love maker, at least that I know of.)

[J.D. Frailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book aloud to my wife Deanna, during the covid 19 pandemic quarantine, while she worked on a paint by numbers picture she had bought me for my birthday a year ago; I found the painting too hard for my famously bad fine motor skills. I had read The Damned before, didn't remember much detail, but both she and I enjoyed it a lot. It's a slow psychological study in which the new ferry across a muddy Mexican river turns out to be too big for the river, without Mexican men digging mud from its channel each time it comes across, creating a long back up in which cars wait hours, all day, to get across. There are individual profiles of the stranded motorists, some desperate to cross because they've committed crimes and were fleeing capture, others being tired of crappy relationships and hopelessness for the future. I had previously marked one paragraph with the caption, The essence of John D.'s writing:
"He had learned that each man has black and evil thoughts, and that those thoughts are not a proof of variance, but rather a proof of kinship with the rest of men. The mind forever contains lust and malice and hate, and when you can keep those instincts in their proper compartment, then you have become a reasoning animal, a man. Let them escape and you live on the instinctual level of a beast. But there is no shame in owning such instincts--only shame in giving them dominance."
John D. (as he is known to his fans, including Stephen King and Jimmy Buffet) was a heck of a writer, known more for his crime writing, but he did all kinds of books involving the internal struggle just described. A review in the NY Times a few years ago, twenty years after his death in 1986, called his writing "the thinking person's beach books."

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is excellent. Though it is not quite as self-assured as April Evil, and there are too many fist fights, which makes it feel a bit…. I don’t know, commercial?

But that said, the story is very strong.

Rich and believable characters, strong plotting, and certain passages of philosophical grandeur — these seem to be the hallmarks of John D. McDonald’s writing.

[Jenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, far the best book I've read aside from "Travis McGee" series. Mystery, and action well keep you flipping the pages. His got some marvelous character, and the plot was exceptional.

[Bernard · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars, rounded up.

I think this is my first John D. MacDonald book, and I did enjoy it.
It's a book that's both ahead of its time and also a book very much of its time.
A group of disparate characters, are waiting for the new ferry (that's too big for the river, according to an employee who works there) to take their cars across from Mexico back into Texas, U.S.A.

The group of people include an adulterous businessman and a woman he's picked up, a mamma's boy and his wife on their honeymoon, a criminal escaping the law after the murder of a bullfighter, a third-rate comic and two twins who are part of his act, a traveling politician, and a farmer from Texas who has been brought up in Mexico. These different people have their reasons for wanting to cross the border ASAP, and are annoyed when there is a delay getting their cars boarded on to the ferry for a river cross. Their tempers fray and relations are to be tested to the max.

People who knew each other, (or thought they did) won't be getting along and those who hitherto were strangers to one another will see some aspects of their lives change also. The lives of these people during this unplanned stay at the river are likely to change forever, for better or (for most of them) for worse...

A fast moving book I read quickly, this book has a range of male characters who are not likeable (except for Bill, the farmer and a river employee) and they are not meant to be. Their attitudes to some of the women in this book would have been deemed misogynistic and disrespectful even back in 1952, when the book was published. They are products of their time, but the author did stress that the behavior that surfaced from at least one of them was not excusable in any way.

Not all of the female characters in the book are angels either, and are flawed in their own way.
A possible exception here would be the newlywed Linda, and I felt that MacDonald went out of his way to present her as an attractive, likeable, sensual woman. What's to become of her, what will the future hold in store for her?

As well as the future fates of these people we get their back stories, some of which can be startling and have a few surprises.

Quite daring for its time, this is worth a read if you can find a copy. If you haven't read any of MacDonald's standalones, this would be a good one to start with.

Mickey Spillane supplied a blurb (said to be his only one) for the book, simply stating that he wished he had written it.

[Edwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looking for redemption, protagonist Hugh McReedy reconnects with a spurned lover and attempts to help her genius brother beat a murder rap. The novel is essentially an amateur murder investigation with a great cast of characters, and a perfectly paced and engaging plot. Another early MacDonald gem.

[wally · Rating 4 out of 5]

17 jan 16, #75 from macdonald for me. from '57? on the copyright page there is a 1956 copyright, the hearst corporation. below that a 1957 copyright john d macdonald. paperback.

story begins
when i read the small item in the chicago paper and the whole world seemed to stop, i remembered that i had thought about vicky that very morning, thought about her while i was shaving.

onward & upward

notes as i read
this one has most of the hallmarks of the travis mcgee stories. but unlike those stories where mcgee usually recovers lost or stolen money in this one the eye-narrator hugh macreedy is about to recover what he lost, a girl who loves him, a girl he failed to say that he loved her. he's also going to try to uncover evidence to set her brother free, set to die in ten days, the 24th of october, a monday.

materials list

time place scene setting
* a number of places are given: chicago, spain, warrentown and dalton, fuengirola/spain
* sheridan college, dalton
* story opens in october and much of what happened in dalton six months ago is the focus of the story, the rape murder of jane ann paulson
* various dates are provided to signify the passing of time, or time itself, "two years ago"..."three years ago"..."six months ago"...
* hotels, hotel rooms, bars, cafes, macclelland inn, one of the hotels
* the house in dalton where vicky had been living, 28 maple
* the brig, basement bar at the macclleland inn
* the tennant house in warrentown, #8 anchor lane
* state prison, near mercer, an industrial town...the bird cage...where death row inmates are kept for a time prior
* the paulson home, 88 oak road
* the garson home
* morgan's lake...when she (jane ann) was 12, qqc happened there
* big time burger drive-in...teen hang-out

characters both major minor scene-setting well-known/famous
* eye-narrator, hugh macreedy, 30-year-old, construction worker, very much single
* victoria "vicky" landy, 26-year-old, the female lead
* alister "al" landy, her 19/10-year-old brother, on death row for the murder rape of jane ann. said to somewhat of a genius, likened to leopold & loeb, also social misfit, student at sheridan college
* jane ann paulson, the raped murdered girl in dalton, 16-year-old
* her sister, nancy paulson, al's girlfriend, 18-year-old
* waitress
* al's attorney
* telboht brothers, construction firm that employs hugh
* green local labor, payroll people
* sitterson, project superintendent, telboht brothers
* al mooney, co-worker of hugh, a kind of father-figure
* bucky, hugh's father...his mother
* felizia, a woman in spain...hugh spends time with her on his vacation days off
* friends from the home offices
* scotty, in new orleans...hugh has 60 days off upon his return from spain and he intends to go fishing in mexico with scotty but he doesn't make it that far
* husband wife combo at a bar, arguing
* little guy about 50/hugh gets information from him at the bar, has son-in-law in construction
* loeb & leopold, real people
* frank leader, a smart state cop who built the case against al
* prosecution attorney, milligan
* pre-school kids...2 young housewives
* an old lady was raking leaves (landlady of vicky)...mrs hemsold
* chief of police, dalton, perry score
* his only assistant, barney quillan...the proverbial rough cop, quick with the hands so forth so on
* county sheriff turnbull
* ingrid bergman, pre-rainier kelly, einstein
* charlie staubs, owner operator of the mcclelland inn
* his wife, mary
* the junglies...heh! macdonald was not politically correct
* felipe, in spain, a worker bee who was mechanically inclined
* raoul, in spain, who was not
* jud cowan...hmm...was the first lawyer for al, but he bailed when he saw the evidence
* six college kids...at the brig bar...two others
* john tennant, in warrentown, defense lawyer for al
* jurors...a private investigator tennant hired
* robbie howard, previous boyfriend of nancy paulson, he drowned at the lake
* "virginia lewis"...name hugh checks vicky into hotel after she has to move out of apartment 'cause of who she is, sister to the rapist murderer
* guards on catwalks...gate guards...guard captain...young clerk at a corner desk...two guards played cards...and elderly guard...george, one of the car players
* ginny garson, friend/associate of jane ann, she puts out for all ooga booga
* mickey...rook...powie...high school kids associated with ginny
* cora and jerry garson, ginny's parents
* two other guys with jerry, drinking beer on the porch
* sheridan boys...high school boys
* ann sibley, friend of jane ann, her father is a professor
* 3 boys in the 12-year bracket (swimming near where jane ann's body found)
* smith, rough-neck high school boy, hugh and he get it on
* hardesty smith senior, bank president, father of smith
* dr. fargon...then dr. higel
* quarto kid
* car-hop girl, angie

orange caution flag
curious to note the materials used here, in one of his early novels. i left off "hitler"...or did i? the materials list is about 80-90% complete. don't know if i'll complete it or not. probably not. curious, the "real" names he used...god is included, probably noted. but there's only a handful of "real" people included here. some of his later stories have a long list of real folk. there exists, always, in his stories a long cast of characters and they are alive by what they say and do, even the minor characters. fun stuff.

flaws if any?
it is not entirely clear just where the various towns are located. somewhere in the northeast, perhaps new england. hugh's employer has offices in chicago. dalton and warrentown are two towns relatively close. i either missed it, or it wasn't there, but i don't see how hugh and vicky "hooked up" to begin? let me go back, check.

i checked...kinda
hugh met vicky when he was working on a highway project near dalton/warrentown. she was working in the admin bldg at the college where she also babysat her misfit brother. we had over two feet of snow that fell, falling, as i read. here in happy camp there is a lot of white.

19 jan 16
finished. great story. i'd skimmed at least one other review, said something about figuring it out. the reader does learn, when hugh learns, whodunnit. for me, it is almost a cliche to hear a reader make the claim they had it all figured out. easy to write, hard to prove, and usually...i find the claim hard to believe. macdonald writes some darn good yarns, after 75+ stores, i can say with all honesty that i've only been disappointed with one novel...perhaps one or two short stories. the remainder are solid, a joy to read, most often the "bad" get their just reward, and the good triumph. and that, my friend, is never a bad thing.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A number of prominent writers for the past 40 years, including Walter Mosley, Stephen King, Dean Koontz. Jonathan Kellerman and Sue Grafton, have cited Mr. MacDonald as a major influence on their work. While Mr. MacDonald’s genre was largely mystery, “The Damned” (1952) is a bit different. It is set at a ferry crossing from Mexico into Texas, with a several-hour delay. A number of Americans are waiting on the Mexico side, each with a different back-story and different ways of dealing with the delay and the oppressive heat. So there’s a honeymooner with “trouble in paradise” as well as the man’s ill mother along for the ride; there’s a killer on the run; there’s a married man escorting what might at first appear to be a bimbo; there’s a couple of dancing/singing girls traveling with their snarky manager; and a few others. As the hours drag by, tempers are tested and some impulsive, aggressive behavior results, as well as other tragedies. Relationships are formed and broken. Reasons for their behavior are questioned. And ultimately, believe it or not, the denouement is complex but satisfying.

Of course, there have been other stories of strangers thrown together under stressful circumstances. William Inge’s “Bus Stop” comes to mind, as well as Thornton Wilder’s “The Bridge of San Luis Rey” and Stephen King’s “Under the Dome.” “The Damned” fits in this category nicely. Enjoyable, recommended, but I’m looking forward to reading Mr. MacDonald’s mystery novels (I have “A Purple Place for Dying” [Travis McGee] on my bookshelf). Four stars.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where have I been that I haven't been reading MacDonald? He's like the best of Jim Thompson and Patricia Highsmith all rolled up into one. No, I take that back. He's better than even that. If you haven't read him, then stop what you are doing and read him NOW!

[Daniel Polansky]

Excellent and peculiar. About a handful of people who get stuck at a ferry crossing near the Mexican/American border, and the misfortunes which befall them. I picked up one of MacDonald's at some point earlier, something which was a bit more straight detective-y and I liked it but didn't love it. This was much better. The writing is really on point, each of the different characters feels well-realized (mostly; in keeping with the noir tradition the assholes and villains are better drawn than the more decent characters.) MacDonald's writing is astute in its depiction of sexual mores as well as casual racism. The structure is likewise really peculiar, with each short chapter taking place from the POV of one of the different characters, ranging from casual gangsters to emasculated husbands. A lot of other mid-century noir writers – Chandler, Hammet, the other McDonald, etc. – had the prose chops to go toe to toe with more or less anyone (almost) but were hampered by having to stick to the usual genre conventions, which are fun but limiting. It's interesting to see what can be done out of those boundaries, kind of like what Highsmith was doing with Price of Salt. Hey, is this out of print? Because if so, it would slot neatly into the NYRB classic's catalog. Keep.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

This John D. MacDonald novel, written in 1952, was his fifth non-SF novel since his debut with The Brass Cupcake (1950). A Mexican river crossing and disparate characters thrown together by a disrupted ferry service interact under stresses both internal and external.

THE HEAT HIT THEM ALL . . .the scorching heat of Mexico, and it ate at their nerves. The stalled ferry held them in the heat until they could stand no more. The honeymooners fought, and loved and fought again. The pretty little tramp clawed her married lover's eyes. The trembling killer looked behind and knew his time was short. There were others waiting, too, some good, some bad, but all of them tormented by the shape of disaster to come.
Time gave them all a second chance. Most of them stepped on the face of time.

[Cashmere · Rating 4 out of 5]

After finishing John D. MacDonald's exceptionally disappointing Ballroom of the Skies, it was wonderful to find him return to excellent form in The Damned .

As I read this book, I couldn't help but think of it in terms of a movie. Indeed, more than any of the other books I have read to date by John D., this one cries out to me to be adapted for the big screen. By Tarantino perhaps?

Anyhow, this unique story is about various people and their lives and histories and interactions as they wait for a car ferry that is having difficulty crossing a river in Mexico. John D. presents us with colorful and clearly defined characters, often times revisiting events in the plot from various people's perspectives.

Having been so disappointed by the previous book I read, I eagerly breezed through this one in just a few days.

[Alonzo Church · Rating 3 out of 5]

A set of characters end up at a broken ferry crossing on a hot day in Northern Mexico. Some are tramps. Some are middle aged men on a fling. Others could be sadistic murderers on the run, newlyweds, momma’s boys. Some will die in this godforsaken patch of terrain, but for most, life will go on.

MacDonald can write. Boy, he can write. The heat of Mexico. The simmering fury of the tourists stranded in the hinterlands. All depicted in a way to make aspiring writers extremely jealous. The problem is MacDonald is the sort of liberated guy who thinks women are either sexy baby breeders, castrating Harridans who turn their sons gay, or sluts. He feels he must philosophize his theory of sex here and there. He imagines the thoughts of his women characters — and it’s all terribly wrong.

I love old books and that makes me resent complaints that a book is dated and resent defenses that a book is of its time. This thing is repellent in its sexism and you may want to give it a miss. There are a lot of MacDonalds out there to sample and some of the non-Travis McGee books leave out the sexist garbage.

[Stormcrow Hayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read enough John D. to know I'm a fan and I've also read enough to know that I'm not a fan of the Travis McGee series, but I'm very much a fan of these earlier novels that are often just amazing.

For the record, I read the first two Travis McGee novels back to back and they're fine. But for me they were three star books and compared to Dead Low Tide or All These Condemned, among the first of MacDonald's works that I read, they simply weren't nearly as good or interesting. So, at least for now, I'm going to stick with this period where he really seems to shine.

I had a tiny bit of trouble getting into the first 20 pages of Death Trap, but soon I was hooked. And the further along I got, the more impressed I was with the writing and characters. I love how Mrs. Hemsold, a nosy, annoying and fairly stock character at the beginning comes into play at the end of the book when our protagonist, Hugh, needs more information. I love the side plot of cops being abusive that is slipped into the fold of the plot and fits perfectly. I liked the poetic passage that opens chapter nine in which JDM allows Hugh to muse as to what everyone is doing that morning including, "Jane Ann slept deep under the October grasses, with gray wind moving unheard through the drying leaves that still clung to cemetery elms." (p. 135)

Despite my enjoyment of these elements, there is a somewhat eye rolling section dealing with hypnosis. I know this was favorable at the time as we see it so many movies and books of the era, but it feels a bit pat now. A few other minor quibbles keep it from five stars, but nothing would keep me from recommending it. I very much enjoyed Death Trap.

[doug bowman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The tradition of strangers meeting on the road is as old as the Canterbury Tales, and this literary genre is given a South of the Border slant as a group of strangers meet at a ferry crossing in Mexico, where the crossing is slowed by a bureaucratic glitch. Steinbeck used the same literary conceit in THE WAYWARD BUS, and MacDonald uses it to showcase his strengths as a writer. In his non-Travis McGee novels, MacDonald was incredibly adept at characterization based conflict, and this novel showcases that particular talent. Each character's back-story baggage is fleshed out in conflict with another character, driving the ebb and flow of plot-lines into a series of personal climaxes. He is such a talented writer that his stories never sink into soap-opera cliches.

[Steve Goble · Rating 4 out of 5]

They all had secrets and fears and dreams, and they all were stuck like flies in amber under the blazing Mexican sun while uninspired laborers dug up mud so the damned new ferry -- way too big for the Rios Conchos -- could get close enough to the bank to take on more cars.

They were mostly strangers to one another, but they mingled there on a long hot day -- and they fought, and lied to one another, and fell in love, and spilled secrets and blood.

This is not really a mystery novel -- we always know who has killed whom -- but it is saturated with crime and violence. It also is eminently readable, like everything else I have read by MacDonald.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've enjoyed MacDonald's books in the past. And while I wouldn't want a steady diet of them they do make for an enjoyable experience when you pace them out. Even though they are a bit dated they still read well and he draws you into his characters. Here we have a worldly construction foreman reading about the death sentence of a young man whose sister he was involved with in the past. If you are a fan of the Travis McGee novels you will see elements of that figure in this novel as well. Fast paced, fun, and a quick read.

[Freddie the Know-it-all · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sucks

You don't get to find out whodunnit by hypnotizing someone.

Negative stars.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good one.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Damned is one of MacDonald's earliest novels, first being published in 1952 by Gold Medal, then being republished again and again (Gold Medal #s 240, 481, 962, and 3490, and possibly more). Rather than being a novel about a caper or even a single flowing plotline, MacDonald sets this one as a study or a portrait of a number of people caught in a situation. You know the theory. You set a few ordinary people in a box and shake it up a bit and see who folds under the pressure and who rises to the occasion. It could be a house in the Catskills, a ship at sea, a runaway train car, or even a spaceship. Here, MacDonald sets his story in northern Mexico where the most direct route back to the U.S. border requires a ferry crossing. Ingenuity being what it is and progress being made in fits and starts, the geniuses operating this road decided the old ferry crossing the river was too small, too slow, too embarassingly provincial, and replaced it with a brand spanking-new one. Unfortunately, the geniuses did not realize the new one - the mighty new one - was simply too big at times of year for this river and getting it close to the dock where the cars could roll on was treacherous at best and required hand-digging with shovels to clear a path. For the tourists barreling through to the border though, this meant an interminable wait and tempers were fraying as the cars lined up in the hot sun. That's the plot in a nutshell and the story is not plot-driven so much as it is character-driven and MacDonald is at his best creating multi-dimensional characters.

First up is the charming couple of Darby Garon and Betty Mooney, a large-breasted romantic partner he scooped up in Texas one night on business away from his wife and kids. After three weeks touring Mexico with this gal, he considered her the same sort of mistake as the too-rich meal of enchiladas and beer that was bursting his stomach: "She too was highly spiced, completely indigestible." The three weeks had been a crazy, expensive mistake and he couldn't wait to see the last of her, although he was left feeling soiled and shamed by his time with her. "Hell," he thought, "would be a place where you drove forever under an unmoving sun, riding next to a big girl in a yellow dress, a girl with her eyes shut." He lusted after her for weeks and now felt like a gaunt foolish man of middle years "spending his savings on a raw, big-bodied young girl with a limited IQ."

The next couple up on our love tour of northern Mexico is John Gerrold and his lovely bride Linda who are honeymooning in Mexico with his mother, of course. They are another odd pairing with Linda still in her honeymoon phase of adoring him and John wanting her to take a "proper wifely attitude" instead of enjoying "it" too much. She is hot to go for it in the shade of a tree and John worries whether mother would be upset.

Del Bennicke is the next customer in the line. He was sort of out of place in this que, being a soldier of fortune, who accidentally had left behind him in Mexico City a trail of blood and gore and two bodies, one a prominent bullfighter, and he feared that half the Mexican police forces were now on the prowl for him. He renamed himself Del Benson for this social gathering.

Bill Danton was a bilingual Texan who grew up in Texas and Mexico and whose father had settled in Mexico after the social set took him to task for marrying the Mexican woman who he hired as a nanny. Bill looked like an American, but talked like a Mexican right down to his hand gestures and mannerisms.

Another car had a trio in it, an entertainment trio, consisting of an older man, Phil Decker, the manager, and two young blonde women, twins indeed, Riki and Niki, wearing identical blue denim playsuits.

The creative genius of MacDonald is that he takes a story without much plot: will they all survive waiting in the traffic jam before they can get across the river or kill each other in the meantime if they don't die of heatstroke. MacDonald takes this idea and spins it into a fascinating tale about people that is impossible to put down.

[Noreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Early John D MacDonald, pre Travis McGee. Wonderful descriptions of characters.

A bunch of people get stuck in Mexico waiting for a ferry. Ferry is stuck in shallow water. The stories in each car and occupants waiting for their turns to cross.

The newlyweds: Page 76: She had thought of herself a tough little realist. Perhaps she had confused weakness with sensitivity….He could see the wryness, in the world and he could enjoy irony, but he was absolutely incapable of laughing at himself, ever. ….And she had excused him for that, to anyone just learning to stand on his own feet, personal dignity was a bit too important. … Can any person lead a happy life with another person who finds it impossible to laugh at himself?

It had been another girl who had taken her young husband to that place, who had seduced him—- rather silly girl who had believed at that time that the key to marriage was basically sexual. And the silly girl had wept and taken in her arms an unwilling boy whose honesty in love was forever diluted by a shallowness of spirit.

Pg 78: John Carter Gerrold would never grow older. It made her think of pictures she had seen of a savage tribe where skulls of infants are encircled by metal bands, so that in adulthood their heads are a shape of horror. …his mother had managed to bind John’s emotions so that his body became a man, the mind remained that of a clever child. Children never laugh at themselves.

Pg 85:For Darby Garron, the middle-aged adulterer, there was the torment of the sun, and the greater torment that of remorse and self-disgust.

Pg 161: Ever see a hurt cat? I’m a girl with a lot of hurt cat in me. They go away. They go off by themselves, Bill, and they tend to themselves and the hurt gets better or it kills them.

Pg 174: A man to love and a place to sleep and now for a time a few extra pesos. It should be enough. Enough for gods. All the weight of happiness seemed to come at once into her throat. She felt a quiver of superstition, that is wrong to be this happy, that to be this happy courted misfortune. …But to think of such things did not, somehow diminish the extent of her happiness. They merely salted it a bit and made it more flavorful. Life moved too quickly. Rosalina wanted five hundred more years of exactly what she had.

[Peter Sidell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating character study and study of a place and time

A ferry that has a hard time crossing a river is the device triggering an accidental assembly of people. The temporary interweaving of their lives becomes the story.
There is the man who has impulsively taken a woman to Mexico for an interval of self indulgence. Now he regrets it worrying about how he may have hurt his wife and family.
The is the newly wed couple returning from their honeymoon.. the delay reveals to both of them that their Marie has been a mistake. There is the rawboned Texan entering a time of personal maturity who helps everyone as best he can, who in the process falls in love and is forced by circumstances to acknowledge time is needed to develop that love.
There are twin girls, actresses working with an older showman who decide to abandon acting as a career while he ignores symptoms of heart disease probably foreshadowing impending death.
There is the wheeler dealer fleeing his involvement in the death of a lover and her boyfriend a matador.
Finally there is the Mexican man whose work it is to facilitate the ferry crossing. He has a simple fulfilling life with a happy wife and family.
MacDonald's way of saying the proper study of mankind is man. Ironic that thirty years later he would die of heart disease.

[Joan Strater · Rating 5 out of 5]

A case study of human nature

I have to admit I've never read much by John D. MacDonald other than the Travis McGee novels, which for the most part I've enjoyed. This is not Travis McGee. This novel covers 6 people, most from the US, trying to catch a ferry from Mexico to the United States. The whole book takes place during a period of 24 hours when they are pretty much held captive in a long line of cars just waiting, because the ferry has become stuck in low water. Human nature, being what it is, does not handle tension and idleness well. Each of these very different people have their own reasons for wanting to get to the United States quickly. One is a murderer trying to cross the border before Mexican authorities catch up with him. One a guilty adulterer regretting his fling. Another the adulter's pick-up who has leeched him for for she can get. Two are a young married couple returning from their Mexican honeymoon, already no longer in love with each other. One an American living and doing business in Mexico on a routine business trip back to the States. MacDonald captures the boredom, the heat, and the escalating tension perfectly. Although I found the ensuing romance in the story a bit far fetched, it did not take away from my enjoyment of the book. I read this over the course of an evening and the afternoon the next day. I would recommend this book.

[Matt Lenz · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Damned,” by John D. MacDonald is very satisfying. Written in 1950, it is a convoluted story that refuses to give the reader peace until the final pages. Heavy rains have knocked out the ferry landing on a river in Mexico and cars back up in the dusty heat waiting to cross. MacDonald lets you get to know many of the occupants in each of the cars and Bill Danton emerges as the hero, a tough and decent man. Impatience and blistering heat work to expose the weaknesses of most of the characters. Linda and John are newlyweds, but it doesn’t take long to see that John is a mamma’s boy making you wish they were married. The cover of the paperback version I read had a price of 35¢ and a little box on it that said: “Over one and a half million copies of this sensational novel in print.” It was the sixth printing dated 1960. The cover art and cover copy didn’t invite me to read the book, but the printing in the little box intrigued me. How could it satisfy over a million and a half readers? Well, it did.

[John Waanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my fourth or so John MacDonald novel. I have taken on the task of reading a full box of his books that my father left - and trying to read them in the order written.
Like the others, this one made me think. MacDonald had a brilliant skill and imagination as a storyteller for his era. He has an ability to put you into the mind of his characters - such as it might have been in the early 1950s. Those characters are sexist, homophobic & misogynistic - but even within that context they are relatable. His treatment of the characters might even be viewed a bit progressive for the time.
In this story, the narrative is presented from the shifting perspective of each of the characters that are stuck in an unfortunate situation and forced together and their interactions with each other. MacDonald takes the time to develop a credible back story for each character so the reader is able to understand their feelings and motivations- and he does this in a relatively short novel.
Simply amazing. Looking forward to the next one on my list.