Customer Reviews

Death Trap

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4 star:		(1)
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This is one of John D. Macdonald's best. It falls halfway between his fast paced action thrillers and his deeper more charactor driven works, containing the best elements of each of them.

Death Trap is one of John D. MacDonald's paperback originals from the 1950s. Narration is provided by protagonist Hugh MacReedy, a construction engineer who turns out to have a pretty good knack for detective work.

When Hugh finds out that Alister Landy, the younger brother of a former girlfriend, has been sentenced to death for murder, he's understandably shocked. As the date of execution draws near, Hugh takes it upon himself to prove Alister's innocence.

This compelling page turner of a book describes a small midwestern town whose idyllic exterior masks a very ugly underbelly. As Hugh's investigation proceeds, he uncovers police corruption, sexual deviancy, an out of control youth culture and more. It becomes a race against the clock as Hugh sifts through clues to solve a murder which, in the eyes of the law, has already been solved.

Death Trap is storytelling at its best. Highly recommended.

This is an older John D MacDonald book, but it's not in the Travis McGee series. The plot could not be more interesting. The story takes place outside Chicago which is always fun for me. I read right through until it was finished. I particularly like his descriptions of the scenes & clothing styles of the time.

Death Trap, originally published in 1957, is one of John D. MacDonald's best stand-alone thrillers.

Hugh, a globe-trotting construction bum, spots that an ex-girlfriend's younger brother is about to be executed for murder. He is drawn back to a small Anytown in the hopes of helping his ex-girlfriend, Vicky, through the trauma - and also to ease his own troubled conscience.

Hugh invariably gets tangled up in detective work. Initially, he makes a haphazard effort to placate Vicky, but soon discovers that this small Midwestern town has a seedy underbelly. It also, in the best JDM tradition, has a violent deputy and a politically-minded sheriff, neither of which encourage Hugh's amateur investigations.

Hugh's efforts lead him into the depressing swamp of small-town juvenile delinquency and the frighteningly rigid adult system that created it. Hugh's interactions with the town's sordid teen populate - and its deliberately-blind authority figures - are the highlights of the book. With his outsider's point of view, Hugh can see that the town is built on lies, desperately painting over the corruption to preserve the status quo.

The main criticism with the book is the deus ex machina in the conclusion. After doing some satisfying leg-work for the majority of the book, Hugh hands the case over to the Gods of Fiction to solve the case using the wizardry of modern pseudo-science. Again, to the author's credit, this is still managed well and in a suspenseful way. The dramatic climax and confrontation with the killer is an exceptionally well-told scene, and MacDonald proves again that he mastered the art of the thriller.