“He Sold His Soul For Another Man’s Wife.”
This weeks Pulp Friday is a selection of covers from the prolific US thriller writer, John D MacDonald.
MacDonald got his start writing for pulp magazines in the late forties, then rode the paperback boom that occurred in the fifties and early sixties. He was the author of over sixties books, as well as numerous short stories and articles.
He is probably best know for creating the fictional private investigator Travis McGee, who featured in 21 of McDonald’s books.
A number of his books have been adapted for film and television. His novel The Executioners was filmed as Cape Fear, starring Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Polly Bergen, in 1962, and again by Martin Scorsese in 1991. One of the McGee books, Darker Than Amber, was made into a film of the same name, starring Rod Taylor, in 1970.
The following selection of covers spans the late fifties to the early seventies and include many of the Fawcett Gold Medal editions of McDonald’s work, as well as the UK Pan paperback additions.
Enjoy.
There was also a telemovie called Travis McGee based on The Empty Copper Sea – starring Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross.
Terry,
Never heard of that one. It sounds great. Do you know whether it is available on DVD pr VHS anywhere?
Andrew
They are lovely covers. I have some of the Travis McGee covers, not many of the standalone books in old vintage covers.
Some great JDM covers are shown above. I’ve been systematically reading the older stand-along novels, having finished the Travis McGee series, and find them outstanding. Most are easily found, some in original paperback versions, on Amazon, AbeBooks, etc. Also, a great website for JDM fans is “The Trap of Solid Gold” by Steve Scott: http://thetrapofsolidgold.blogspot.com
Simply do a search on the site for the novel you’re interested in, and a great synopsis and evaluation comes up, along with most of the different covers for each novel. Steve has done an excellent job with his site.
Steve,
Thanks for stopping by. The site you mention does look terrific.
Cheers,
Andrew