“I recently discovered John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series. Every time I finish one of those slender books, I tell myself it’s time to take a break and return to the pile on the night stand but then find myself deep into another McGee novel. Before there were Lee Child and Carl Hiaasen, there was MacDonald — as prescient and verbally precise as anyone writing today can possibly hope to be.” – Nathaniel Philbrick

John D. MacDonald is in select company when it comes to American Crime and Suspense Fiction.

• Dashiell Hammett
• Raymond Chandler
• Ross MacDonald
• John D. MacDonald
• Mickey Spillane
• Robert Parker

These are the five writers that define the genre. Someone else might include a few other names, but this is my list. And I am going to stand by it.

MacDonald was born in 1916 and died in 1986. During World War II he was in China, India, and Burma with the OSS. His first stories, featured those places. In 1951, he and his family settled in Sarasota, Florida, and his stories began to feature Florida.

“The Killers” is a story about a group of Florida guys who meet on weekends to go diving and what happens when the wrong type of becomes a part of the group. John Lash is the “wrong sort of guy,”

It makes you wonder what happened to a guy like that when he was a kid. It isn’t exactly a competitive instinct. They seem to be able to guess just how to rub everybody the wrong way. But you can’t put your finger on it. Any of us could tell Dusty his old tub needed a paint job and the bottom scraped and Dusty would say we should come around and help if we were so particular. But John Lash could say it in such a way that it would make Dusty feel ashamed and make the rest of us feel ashamed, as though we were all second rate, and John Lash was used to things being first rate.

When he kidded you he rubbed you raw.

“The Killers” is complex, with all the twists and turns you expect from a writer as gifted as MacDonald. And, of course, since it is a MacDonald story there is a notable Femme Fatale.

Betty is what I would call a beautiful girl. She’s a blonde and almost the same height as Croy, and you can look at her all day without finding anything wrong with her. She dives a little.

I highly recommend “The Killers.”