Green Ripper by John D. MacDonald

Beautiful girls always grace the Florida beaches, strolling, sailing, relaxing at the many parties on Travis McGee's houseboat, The Busted Flush. McGee was too smart--and had been around too long--for many of them to touch his heart. Now, however, there was Gretel. She had discovered the key to McGee--to all of him--and now he had something to hope for. Then, terribly, unexpectedly, she was dead. From a mysterious illness, or so they said. But McGee knew the truth, that Gretel had been murdered. And now he was out for blood... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.



Reader Reviews
The Green Ripper Review, July 27, 2003 Reviewer: staceycochran.com from Oracle, Arizona Ho, ho, ho! Merrrrry Christmas! The Green Ripper is here to wish all you nice boys and girls a very merry Christmas -- with a machine gun! 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