Recent reads

The Black Squall, by Lori Stone. There are a few mystery series that I have enjoyed reading over the years. Robert B. Parker's Spenser series is one. Sharyn McCrumb's series of Appalachian tales is another. And so is John D. MacDonald's long series of books about Travis McGee, that salty old houseboat-dwelling Florida raconteur, freelance investigator, salvage consultant, and slightly tarnished knight-for-hire who pursued swindlers, crooked land speculators, drug dealers, corrupt cops and other south-Florida evildoers in a series of novels from 1964's The Deep Blue Goodbye to 1984's The Lonely Silver Rain.

Recent discussion on a fiction-related listserv clued me in to a couple of things that I didn't know about McGee and his creator. Apparently there are persistent rumors that MacDonald wrote a book titled Black Borders for McGee in which the peripatetic private eye met his death. However, no such book has ever been published and MacDonald's widow and publisher both stoutly deny any such rumors. But that doesn't mean that McGee is safe in that limbo to which fictional characters retire when their series have run their course.

Lori Stone's The Black Squall, a novel published in 2001 through Iuniverse, a purveyor of "supported self-publishing", begins with a young professional woman discovering that her father and uncle have been killed in an explosion at sea. Her father? Well, he was a salty old houseboat-dwelling Florida raconteur, freelance investigator, salvage consultant, and slightly tarnished knight-for-hire who pursued swindlers, crooked land speculators, drug dealers, corrupt cops and other south-Florida evildoers. Sound familiar?

Although Stone, for obvious reasons, must be coy about the question, as in this interview, there can be very little doubt that the deceased father in her book is at the very least a very close kindred spirit to Travis McGee. Allusions to the titles and background of MacDonald's books abound through out The Black Squall, beginning with the title, which echoes the format of the McGee titles with their inevitable color references. (For a more detailed analysis, see here.)

I enjoyed reading the book, but I found that most of my interest was in spotting the allusions to MacDonald's books, not in the doings of the protagonist, one Jean Pearson. Stone is a competent writer and storyteller, with the exception of one glaring plot discrepancy involving a helpful secondary character who, at the end, is suddenly and inexplicably revealed as a villian, thus rendering his previous help to the protagonist completely nonsensical. However, her lead character lacks McGee's distinctively pungent bachelor charm, and her descriptions of the Floridian settings lack MacDonald's eye for detail and atmosphere. This is one of the hazards of imitating a master.

The Black Squall reads almost like a very good example of fan fiction. At best, such fiction can recall the pleasures of the work that it derives from, but it rarely exceeds its progenitor, and usually gets weaker as its story proceeds away from that original source. A successful series requires a protagonist who can stand on his (or her) own two feet and command the reader's attention without the crutch of allusions. If Stone wants her promised followup novel, Dead Issue, to appeal to readers, then Jean Pearson needs to become a compelling character in her own right rather than trading on her father's connections.

Obligatory Nancy Pearl moment: My interest in the McCrumb books is primarily due to their setting, whereas my interest in Parker's books is primarily due to the appeal of the character Spenser. MacDonald's books score high on both appeal factors. McGee is an entertainingly eccentric narrator, and the south Florida setting he inhabits is piquantly described and easily imagined in all its sunbaked, seedy splendor. Stone's novel, although competently written, does not excel in either area, but the clever allusions to McGee make it an entertaining read for MacDonald fans, and it's always possible that she could catch a second and more individualistic wind in her next book.