Barrier Island

Who would have guessed that the world of Mississippi real estate could be so dicey? Tuck Loomis is a compulsive womanizer who makes his living as a land developer. He has purchased one of the barrier islands off the Mississippi gulfcoast ostensibly to develope it as an exclusive enclave consisting of million dollar homes. But his real plan is to sell the island to the U.S. Parks Department at an overly inflated price, thereby making a killing without having to really do much of anything. Wade Rowley is a realtor with a finely honed sense of right and wrong. When Wade figures out what Tuck Loomis is up to, he sets out to thwart the deal. Imagine Wade's reaction when he discovers that all the right people have been bribed, making Tuck's scheme unstoppable. Barrier Island by John D. MacDonald is a very strongly written work of fiction featuring several interesting subplots and a diverse cast of characters all of whom are well fleshed out and completely believable. Moreover, the book's considerable appeal is enhanced by MacDonald's vividly evocative prose and his gently voiced message of environmental sanity. This is a masterfully crafted work notable for great plotting, superbly drawn characters and wonderfully detailed descriptions. Highly recommended.

I have a biased review of this book not only because I'm a John MacDonald fan but also because I am from and reside on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I visit our barrier islands frequently (you can only get there by boat)and really appreciate the detailed description of our islands by Mr MacDonald. To me, this book was not a difficult read and if you are truly a fan of Travis Magee and mysteries, you will not be dissapointed.

This is my first John MacDonald book and I was impressed by the great character development. This is not your standard murder mystery - instead it reminds me of Larry McMurtry's "life is full of tragedy" theme. The greed of two men causes a chain reaction of events that end up with one of them being killed and life forever changed for a whole host of people. Is it a mystery? No - the reader knows exactly what happens and no one is looking for the real murderers. What it is is well-written and interesting and, ultimately it struck me as realistic. From what I've read of the other reviews, this was not MacDonald's standard fare - but I am still intrigued enough to look for some more. One thing I was terrible disappointed in - and this is not a reflection of MacDonald, but rather Fawcett Books, the publisher - there were massive amounts of typos in the book - sometimes at least one on every page for 15-20 pages at a stretch - misspellings, quotation marks left off, names not capitalized. It got to be distracting and then a big joke. How unprofessional of Fawcett to send such a fine book to press with so many mistakes!

I have the terrible feeling that I should like this book more than the earlier Travis McGee novels. Fortunately or unfortunately, that is not the case. Barrier Island provides some of the richest characterizations and most complicated plot points to be found in one of his books. I really admire what he did here and had he not died soon after publication, it would have been interesting to see where this new direction had taken him. I think that how much you like this book will come down to a question of taste. I enjoy the simplicity and the hard-boiled mystery elements of a book like Bright Orange for the Shroud more than I enjoyed Barrier Island. The reader is required to work a lot harder in this book than in some of the others and the plot is occasionally so complicated that I had to go back to remind myself what I had just read. In short: Do read if you are a MacDonald fan already. Even if you are not, if this is your cup of tea then it would be a perfect cup of tea. Someone looking for more standard hard-boiled detective material should pick up a Travis McGee instead.

I'm an unashamed MacDonald acolyte. A completely biased fan. Seek objectivity elsewhere. This is MacDonald's last published novel. He died soon and suddenly before paperback publication of this swiftly and briskly told entertainment, full of the utterly believable characterizations for which MacDonald has always been particularly esteemed. MacDonald has always been a writer's writer. From Stephen King to Dean Koontz and just about every kind of popular novelist from this half of the century (and from more than a few highly-admired literary novelists), you can read unstinting praise for MacDonald. His work influenced and inspired over a generation of popular novelists, and in his particular specialty, the procedural crime thriller, he may well be peerless. In Barrier Island, the plot may keep you turning the pages (another MacDonald specialty: by the time he reached his artistic maturity his tales unfolded with the spooky, organic precision of an amoeba digesting a bit of flotsam; not a seam or dumb loose end to be found); but it's the mastery of language (and through it the mastery of character) that makes the page-turning worth doing: in this, his last novel, MacDonald had honed his prose down to an almost austere simplicity that camoflages his enormous craft. MacDonald advanced as a writer through the evolution of his language. Even in some of his early novels there are moments of Art, with a capital "A," but here, in this last work, there is Art everywhere. The irony of this clean prose revealing the utter messiness of human affairs (about which MacDonald knew more than most), is part of what makes this novel Art, not just another light entertainment. And it is this very quality of language that will have the last page resonating in your head and heart long after you've closed the back cover.