Hitting the Books with Gary Thorne: "A Bullet for Cinderella"

There is no reason for the selection of "A Bullet for Cinderella" over the myriad of other works by John MacDonald. That is one of the great truths about his writing. Pick a book and you will enjoy.

Sure, some are better than others, but as always, the "better" lies in the mind of the reader.

His works are the stuff of the best of crime fiction, of gumshoe investigators, of dark secrets, of noir novels, of hard-boiled detectives, of good and bad gone bad.

These tales come with a writing history. They come from the crime novelettes of the 1930s and 1040s. They come from the crime magazines that were so popular through the 1950s - and live today.

Noir works seem to have a life of their own. They traverse through time without concern for the changes in life. Rather, they are centered on the truths of lives we all recognize, even if reluctantly.

The characters portrayed have always been among us - or are us - and there is no reason to believe that will change.

There is a "getting lost in the book" beauty to MacDonald's works, as with other noir writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett.

The characters are the centerpieces in these stories. You come to know them intimately - or at least you think you do. Most times, these characters do not know themselves, making them dangerous and on the fringe of life.

MacDonald lived from 1916 to 1986. He won virtually every award that could go to a crime mystery writer. His Travis McGee series is still one of the most read of this genre.

His works have been republished in eBook form and trade paperbacks. More than 70 million copies of this works have been sold.

Kurt Vonnegut said of MacDonald, "To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen."

"In Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights. In noir, they fall from the curb." ― Dennis Lehane

Gary Thorne is the play-by-play voice of the Orioles on MASN, and the 2019 season is his 13th with the club and 34th covering Major League Baseball. His blog will appear regularly throughout the season. The Orioles and Sarasota County, for the 8th consecutive year, have partnered on the Big League Reader Program, which rewarded kids who read three books in February with tickets to a Grapefruit League game at Ed Smith Stadium in March.

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