All These Condemned

by John D. MacDonald

SHE WOULD HAUNT ME FOREVER ... — She had taken all that I had -- using the weapons of her money and her demanding hunger for anew man — to make me into something less than a man. She had condemned everybody who had loved her to a lifetime — of shame and self-hatred. — But someone stronger than I had turned on her, killed her, and thrown that tantalizing body into the cold lake.

And now all of us were free at last ... or were we?

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Thriller, Suspense, Novels, Noir

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

John D. MacDonald was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, and educated at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Syracuse and Harvard, where he took an MBA in 1939. During WW2, he rose to the rank of Colonel, and while serving in the Army and in the Far East, sent a short story to his wife for sale, successfully. He served in the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations. After the war, he decided to try writing for a year, to see if he could make a living. Over 500 short stories and 70 novels resulted, including 21 Travis McGee novels.

Following complications of an earlier heart bypass operation, MacDonald slipped into a coma on December 10 and died at age 70, on December 28, 1986, in St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was survived by his wife Dorothy (1911-1989) and a son, Maynard.

In the years since his death MacDonald has been praised by authors as diverse as Stephen King, Spider Robinson, Jimmy Buffett, Kingsley Amis and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.. Thirty-three years after his passing the Travis McGee novels are still in print.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you think that “All These Condemned” is just another murder mystery weekend in the Poconos, you have absolutely no idea of what you are in for with this masterpiece. Yes, it takes place at a weekend mansion on a lake with a great party of people gathered, all of whom you might say have a motive for causing the corpse found near the dock. This book is told from numerous points of view, each chapter representing a different point of view. But, you rarely come across a book filled with such depth and such distinctive characters. In just pages, MacDonald fashions whole biographies, not of these character’s histories, but of who they are in body and soul.

But, the best part of it are the various descriptions of Wilma Ferris, who is a femme fatale of legend, a figure with such personality and such overwhelming presence that all the other guests there are like moths circling her bright flame, or like electrons circling the nucleus, or, as one guest put it, a bunch of trained seals doing her bidding when she suggest that they all dip into the lake in the raw under the moonlight.

They are all entranced by her, men and women alike, and she has beguiled and seduced them all, sucking all the life out of them till they are nothing but rag dolls to her. And, how many of them hate her for what she has done to their independent beings, sucked the individuality out of their spouses till like Mavis they have become nothing but cheap imitations of Wilma.

This was written years before the McGee series, but it's clear that MacDonald was already developing his distinctive voice and characterizations.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

So if you are expecting to read a straightforward murder mystery novel you will be in for a surprise. And I say that because at the end of the first chapter we have a classic setting with the detective and all the suspects together in a locked room of sorts. He even says: "You stay right here in this house. That clear to everybody?"

But your first clue that you were in for a different read is on the first page right under the chapter heading (Noel Hess - Afterward). The significance of that is not apparent until the second chapter, sub-headed (Paul Dockerty - Before), which is also narrated in the first-person, but now it is Paul instead of Noel. And this back and forth, before and after, with alternating narrators, continues throughout the novel. There are eight narrators and each gets a before and after chapter. Although the chapters alternate before and after, the selection of narrators is somewhat random, with no discernible arc being produced by the order in which they are arranged. Suffice to say that eight before and afters were needed and the same sequence of events is related from each character's perspective.

The story - which could have been done in a longish story or at most a novella, is fairly straight forward: Wilma Ferris heads up a cosmetics company and she's over extended and needs to cut costs so she invites all of her sycophants - lawyer, PR guy, manager, lover, etc - to a party at her lakeside estate. They party hearty. She drowns. The police arrive, drag the lake, and when they find her body it is apparent that she was bopped in the head first. Lock them in the house, find out who did the deed. Except the detective is a ruse. He does no detecting. Instead we get all these first-person narrators telling things from their point-of-view.

What the Before narratives do is show how Wilma has mistreated them all and that all of them are dislikable. And they all pretty much have motive and desire to see her dead. What the Afterward narratives do is show the affect her death has on each of them and also solves the mystery by removing suspects. You will quickly see how the random ordering of the Afterward chapters becomes a structural problem that derails the plot.

Essentially, the book is far more a study in characterization than it is a murder mystery. Each of the Before chapters is a mini-clinic in how to develop a character. Likewise, the Afterward chapters show character via action, or at least shows who the characters are by how they respond to the event.

So, great on character, but the multiple first-person narrators and the back and forth before and after chapters really made it hard to follow along and stay interested in the story. Some of the writing surely deserves five stars, but the novel as a whole seems middle of the road to my taste.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back in the 70s and 80s I read quite a few MacDonald crime novels including several in the Travis McGee series and pretty much enjoyed them all. It's been awhile since I've read him (although I did read CAPE FEAR a couple of years ago). Anyway, this one was quite different from any of his previous novels that I have read. It's a not-so-straight-forward murder mystery told from the perspective of several different people. The murder victim is Wilma Ferris who is the head of a profitable cosmetics company. She is also a very unlikable person and tends to antagonize most all of her acquaintances. The murder takes place at her mountain house on a lake during a party attended by several of her business acquaintances and friends. It appears she is drowned while skinny dipping in the lake but she is actually murdered by a stab to her skull. So who committed the crime?

The story is told from the perspective of the guests attending her party which include her accountant, publicist, ad agent, a female TV star that is sponsored by the cosmetics firm, and her artist lover. Spouses are also there including the wife of the accountant who is enthralled with Wilma and tries to emulate her. But otherwise most everyone had a reason to despise her and any of them could be the murderer. The novel is narrated by each guest as separate chapters that relate what happened before and after the murder.

I thought the story probably could have been told in a few chapters as a novella or short story. The alternating narratives tended to confuse the story for me and it was a little hard to keep track of all the characters. But overall, I thought it was well-written and showed the mind-set, frustrations, marital conflicts, and jealousies of well-to-do people of the time (published in 1954).

[Stormcrow Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is almost as much a character study as a murder mystery and I think it does the former better than the latter. But I absolutely loved it. The story itself is a fairly simple straightforward narrative, but as told from a different character's perspective of the event both before and after in a nonlinear way, it was fascinating.

4.5 stars

[Pop · Rating 3 out of 5]

John D is one of my favorite authors. I love the Travis McGee series. But not this stand alone so much. I am surprised that I had the strength to finish it.

[Brette · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

1954 novel feels dated and the gimmick of having each character narrate two chapters (before and after Wilma's body is found)in a seeming random arrangement is somewhat disconcerting. But this is JDM, afterall, and the book is a satisfying read.

Wilma invites a few business associates to her lake house. Saturday night, after much drinking, a swim in the lake turns into a skinny-dipping party, after the spotlights are extinguished. After a while the guests realize that no one knows where Wilma is. The swimsuits go back on, the lights are lit and a frantic search reveals nothing. The police organize a search party involving a dozen boats. Wilma is found, her nude body brought to shore, but after the coroner inspects the corpse it is discovered that Wilma was struck forcefully at the base of the skull with a sharp object. Now it's murder.

[Jesse · Rating 2 out of 5]

Strong two and a half, for the attempt at breaking out of narrative convention with Rashomon-style multiple narrators, interlinked, telling both before and after accounts. Nothing that inventive about the plot, though it moves along ok a lot of the time. Where it hits problems is with MacDonald’s psychoanalyzing his characters, so along with the context and the crime, each has to have some kind of (increasingly melodramatic) flashback to childhood traumas. This is combined predictable with an opportunity for purple language describing the depths from which MacDonald has imagined his characters. By the end I wanted it to be over (particularly the character revealed to be the guilty one is dialled egregiously into very high registers and I began skipping over paragraphs pertaining to them).

[Calzean · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of characters relate their experiences leading up to and after the death of a rich businesswoman during a weekend of drinking, partying and adultery which they all attended. They are not a nice group, and the murdered woman is a massive manipulator to the point where each one had a motive to kill her.
It had a strange ending and a structure of alternate characters narrating each chapter which made me think JDM was trying a new form of art - and given one of his characters was an artist known for a weird form of art - maybe this book is a bit of art imitating art.

[Larry Webber · Rating 2 out of 5]

This seemed like a failed experiment to me. Chapters from different characters' perspectives. No momentum, no pace, just a kind of prismatic mess. It being JDM of course it had some good lines and well drawn characters, but the plot and story here really took a backseat. In fact, they might not have even been in the vehicle at all.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic John D. MacDonald, master storyteller, a writer's writer. One of his earlier thrillers, it does contain the gender stereotypes of the fifties. Still, a great entertaining read.

[wally · Rating 3 out of 5]

25 jan 15, sunday morning, 6:07 a.m. e.s.t.
#30 from macdonald for me. just finished The Only Girl in the Game a good story set in las vegas

(1954) all these condemned, john d macdonald

there is a quote from decimus junius juvenalis, satire number twelve:
they reckon death a blessing,
yet make of life an anxious joy,
a villa thin with gilded laughter,
all these condemned.

and...as others have noted, preparation here, the telling is through the eyes of the various characters in the story...which put off some readers. macdonald does have other stories like this...although he does have quite a few with a multiple-character p.o.v. this one like at least one other is formatted with the name of a character for chapter title. chapter one is (noel hess--afterward) Price of Murder is another macdonald story...without me having gotten too far into this one as yet...that has the same format.
and...in the short story collection, Seven, "the willow pond" followed the same format...there are seven sections each 1st person narrated by a character in the story.

a note on the telling
appears that each chapter is indeed from the p.o.v. of a character in the story. but instead of 3rd-person as in the story linked above, each chapter is a 1st-person narrative. the first chapter from noel hess's p.o.v. is marked afterward followed by the second, (paul dockerty--before)...3rd (judy jonah--afterward)...so t'would seem to be relatively easy to keep time.

story begins:
when at last they found her and took her out of the water i knew i had to go down and look at her. it was more than that sweaty curiosity that surrounds the sudden death of a stranger on a city sidewalk. but there was some of that, too. in all honesty i had to admit that there was some of that, too.

time place scene setting
*a trooper mentions malone and another character talks about new york. malone is in the north of new york state and i'd hazard this is where the action is.
*mrs wilma ferris's place on a lake, presumably near malone, new york. in chapter two, it is lake vale, 300 miles away, from what? nicely ambiguous, unless it be 300 miles north of new york...and that places it near the real place, malone. not always "safe" trying to locate fiction in reality, but at times it works.
*macdonald often sets the time in the year he writes so unless information tells otherwise, the time is 1954
*story opens either late saturday evening, proceeds to early sunday morning by end of 1st chapter

characters major minor peripheral real-famous name-only hypothetical
*noel hess, 1st person narrator of 1st chapter. she is married to randolph "randy" hess and it is clear from the telling that she is not sorry that mrs wilma ferris has drowned. seems randy has been under wilma's thumb in all ways. noel, apparently, has been having some sort of affair with mrs ferris's public relations man, steve winsan. noel describes wilma as her enemy. randy is wilma's business manager. noel is a 35-year-old. and the affair w/steve happens at the lake, steve seducing her as revenge on randy, though noel sees much more in his actions and motivations
*randolph "randy" hess...i think the name has significance, or, the nickname has meaning. randy is a kind of manager for wilma though all he advises her to do she ignores. she has him whipped and she has also bedded him.
*trooper joseph "joe" maleski
*mrs wilma ferris, victim of a drowning, although when her body is pulled from the lake they discover a long sharp pointed object was used to penetrate her skull, so she might have died, anyway. her place on the lake is a place of moneyed drinkers, nude swimmers, and mate traders. she also has a house in cuernavaca, mexico and an apartment in new york. she is @45 years old though she looks and wants others to believe she is much younger. is that a stereo-type? hardly. seems to be the norm for so many. one reviewer mentioned stereo-types...and i have not come across any, as yet. certainly not wilma, not a woman of the 50s, this wilma. in business, very successful, cosmetics, a "wilma" line, their bread and butter, and a higher class "ferris" line, all lower-case may it do ya fine. if there is a stereo-type, i wonder if it is the american businessman, or, in this case, businesswoman, portrayed as a shark. stereo-types? meh! wilma is described as a woman who started with nothing...she started out packaging her own product, etc. she worked her way up. we see wilma past-tense, through the eyes of her employees.
*ferris, incorporated, wilma's business, factory in new jersey, two lines of cosmetics, the wilma line and the ferris line and blue neon, one of their products
*steve winsan: public relations, employed by wilma
*rosalita vega, cook for mrs ferris
*jose vega, butler, bartender, handy man and brother to rosalita
*newspaper people...not yet on the scene, chapter one
*doc andros, coroner, an unexpectedly young man
*noel hess's father...deceased...commercial fishermen, florida, where the family has spent time when noel was younger
*mavis & paul dockerty: paul is the eye-narrator of chapter two. he is disappointed that mavis his wife is becoming more and more like wilma though neither is disappointed in the increased salary he has seen since going to work for wilma. he had been a senior consultant with ramsey & shaver, management engineers before being employed by ferris, incorporated. they have been married for six years, when mavis was 21, paul was 30. mavis believed earnestly in any idea with which she happened to come in contact. and she would jettison it immediately when she ran smack into the next idea. stereo-type? hardly. those two lines describe so many today, fashionable ideology, those who march with no clue why they march, only that marching feels good. be loud, be somebody. mavis also changed her name...she had been called mary gort. she was 1 of 6 kids. she has one sister, named...harriet, who married a bum. only 4 of them are left and the old man, the mother died. paul is the only man among the guests that wilma has not bedded...and from that, wilma has been working on a campaign to change mavis...who is a kind of leonard zelig to wilma.
*gilman hayes, described by noel as wilma's protege. he is described by paul as "muscle boy" compared to "atlas" and is perhaps some sort of artist?
*wallace dorn: described as english/british, veddy veddy proper, string ties, and he is an account executive for the cosmetics business of wilma ferris. he is one of many that wilma has bedded, wallace participating with the belief that by doing so he will...i dunno...change?...conquer?...put her in place? to no avail. she laughs at him afterward. dorn is some kind of advertising man. he has only had 9 affairs in 16 years of marriage, easily dismisses any kind of moral wrong...though too, this trait seems to contradict his idea of the proper. or does it? he is a 49-year-old married w/children man
*8 guests, mrs ferris, and three mexican servants...at the house, opening chapter, so they are all suspects
*two old men in the boat that brings the body ashore, one of them by the name of jimmy, also called charons from greek mythology
*deputy sheriff fish
*les riley, sheriff, sick in bed
*amparo loma, the sturdy and very lovely mexican maid of mrs ferris
*trooper roy carren
*j.p. walter, county attorney
*a lieutenant from the criminal investigation part of the state police
*god
*sales manager died...previous sale manager
*herman...helped with the luggage...at the dockerty house
*old whiskers...a playwright? paul's chapter...a man/woman
*betty grable...famous actress
*fern & howey, advertising agency
*the titled lady in cuernavaca...who slighted wilma...had to leave mexico
*the mexican authorities...who made problems for the above
*two husbands wilma ferris took on...one is an alcoholic, the other a suicide
*the chemists...who work for the cosmetics business
*some kid architect from miami...who was called in to design wilma's lake house...that doesn't look natural, but like something ready to take off from where it has landed above the shore
*judy jonah: also a guest at the lake house. she is a singer-actress who is tired...whose contract is unlikely to be renewed. she has a half-hour show called judy time...and she is a comedic actress. she is a 29-year-old and she has been on the road since she was 15. sounds like some, one or two of the characters in the last read,The Only Girl in the Game
*miss monroe...meaning marilyn monroe, i think...although, curiously, she is written about in the past tense...so maybe not marilyn?
*her agent: judy...he is not there at the lake
*churchill...astaire...mr veblen's theories
*some asinine disc jockey...cinderella...eleanor, julie...(radio)
*mose, a man from judy jonah's past, a man to whom she was married.
*mitch dropped him...dropped mose...that janet character, both from judy's past
*dandy adams...just a name-throw...no clue what the allusion is to
*mother nature
*a duchess, a lady wrestler, an actress from the old silent movies...judy, considering different skits, crying jags as each, she could do.
*paul's grandfather...story about a stepladder, a jacket, a wrench
*captain hammer and nine chinese bandits...allusion to some story or show
*two men in boats...dragging the bottom...virg, one of them
*gabby...mitch...south carolina, more from judy's past...eddie sauter...goodmans, as in music
*dotty, steve winsan's secretary, and it sounds like he is diddling her
*willy, is judy jonah's agent
*jennifer, is steve winsan's ex-wife, to whom he is paying $1500 a month alimony...and for 1954, that sounds like a spanking-lot...and she is in taos, new mexico
*fourth to go would be nancy, steve's big author...doing the p.r. thingy for them...the other three are ferris, hayes, jonah
*columnists...fancy dan? a girl on a mag...a friend on another mag...a tame seal to do the rewrite...to-do with steve/wilma ferris
*a girl he'd known once in the methodist sunday school in deephaven, minnesota, steve knew
*mr lucius howey, a man wallace dorn knows, associates with. dorn believes wilma poinsoned howey against him
*durbin brothers, another account that dorn handles
*little golden girls going to their parties...wilma, when she was an ugly duckling
*a boy wilma and other girls adored
*wilma's psychiatrist
*randy's doctor
*mavis dockerty's sister who died suddenly
*shared bath with 3 other girls, mavis, after leaving home and business school
*a funny little woman, wife of the man with whom mavis had an affair
*beecher boy...from mavis's past...his family
*randolph scott, famous actor...others compared her husband paul to him
*a beautician...that wilma says mavis needs for the makeover that wilma is performing on mavis
*a crowd of people on madison ave...and a fat female person who fell out a window
*evis, female, from a gallery, an associate of gilman's...later...evis is a "he"...so did i read the 1st instance right?
*sister elizabeth in the home where gilman was placed
*little people, refusing to see what was better
*gherke...another who also models as gilman has done...and some meatless girl, who gilman posed over
*one of the big boys at the home...where gilman was placed
*the woman next door...noel's chapter
*a girl in her class...from whom noel stole a ring
*noel's father, died...mother worked...she went with five cousins
*a boy noel knew, past
*the operator...with whom paul speaks afterward
*paul's 1st kiss...a girl named connie/post office
*dali
*"helen"...a kind of imaginary wife of one of the men in the boats dragging the lake...the return, "helen" receiving the news of what these people are like
*hilda...name w/a judy chapter...the keith concert...carlos and jane...horace the doorman...the garage man who brought back her jag before she left for the lake...a drunken psychiatrist at a party
*jane jones...personna of judy/her show?...kid jonah, the boston butcher boy, another personna of judy
*delcy...name from judy's chapter...dumb little music-struck girls...a big one-legged marine...hash...all from a judy chapter
*two studio heads, an old hollywood story...steve's chapter, sammy, a safe
*the tabloid boys...will agar, one of the men in a boat, steve is with him in the boat...bobby, another man in a boat...a night city editor some place..."saul"...imaginary scene in steve's mind
*a strange woman, steve's past....his mother's funeral...a zoo, a lion, typical linthead tourist, her cretin children
*mr walsh, a higher up at steve's work/business
*florence dorn, wallace's wife...fern & hewey, his employer...their circle of friends
*a neighbor of wallace dorn with whom he plays chess
*1893, the elder mr detweiler fern began the business where dorn works
*durbin brothers, massey, gruneweld and star, bi-sodium and tichnor instrument...accounts of dorn's
*hayes & hess, another account of dorn's
*george dorn, wallace's father...boys....who mistreated him...his mother...the boys' parents
*a hypnotist...randy's past...a boy from the audience...a camp where a man taught first aid...roger, a friend of randy's at camp...a friend and a young wife of the star jumper (planes, chutes)...another friend...egyptian, little sheba...buddy? one of his children?...his mother
*dufy, rouault, utrillo...names in a book of reproductions that gilman hayes looks at
*the boy from the home...olympus
*benny from garage...mrs. shattock...janey shattock, who joe maleski is dating...people in the restaurant

an great line from the story
in paul's chapter, he tells his wife, mavis, to go easy on the martinis, last time you lost your sawdust. heh! i've never heard that expression prior.

my take a little past a third-of-the-way complete
good story. i'm enjoying the different perspectives. it is not a complicated storyline to keep track. eight guests, a different take on the before and after from all of them...i assume all of them...looked ahead at the chapter headings, and that appears so. you get some overlap...the skinny-dipping in the lake close to midnight...the disappearance of wilma...the boats dragging the bottom.

a like-kind exchange, time passages
*mavis, at times, is like another macddonald character, Clemmie, as in one of her chapters she describes a kind of play-acting, using her imagination, which is what the time-passages shelf is all about. and like clemmie in that story, and another, a male character, paul participates. but that is the only way she is like clemmie.

some themes, motifs at work in the story
*function. man has only function left to him...and this is explored in one of randy's chapters, function, a kind of nihilism.
*unfaithfulness...a mindset used by wilma, a mindset whose function has entertainment as the goal of unfaithfulness.
*mutation...the idea that character is capable of mutation...the idea that difference is...a kind of goal. interesting idea...as i'd hazard that difference for the sake of being different is an ideal embraced by many, even today, still. coupled with this mutation-idea is the belief that one can pat people into shape...a shape you design. wilma lives this idea.

update, finished, 26 jan 15, monday morning, 7:34 a.m. e.s.t.
done. three-stars. four-stars. five. does it matter? call it 3.5. i liked it, i liked the method of the telling, the different p.o.v.s and as the end approached i wondered how would the story end? the story does look at the before and after of the end of wilma though i can't say if the design is so strict that it offers a b/a from each character. one "before" chapter read like an afterward. macdonald does a good job of offering motivation for each guest to murder wilma...save mavis perhaps. and the mystery is solved, but not in the standard fashion.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gosh, I got to within about 10 pages to the end, and a scene made me realize I read this book many years ago!

I really like this author's solid writing and storytelling. That said, I didn't like this one as much as most of his other books. The point of view shifts chapter by chapter to different characters. I wasn't that interested in the introspective musings of those characters, or in the complexities of their lives, as revealed by their narratives. That style might have worked better with characters who were more colorful and exotic than the group in this story. Most of them proved to be pretty unremarkable people, whose lives were manipulated in various ways by a very wealthy woman who had made herself into a high-powered head of a cosmetics empire.

That's fine. The book was still good, and John D MacDonald remains one of my favorite authors.

[John Waanders · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is classic MacDonald. The story line is slowly revealed through the narrative perspective of each of the characters - along with the relationships between them.
The plot itself is pretty straightforward - a group of people together for a weekend at a lake house and a murder. But MacDonald's real art is his ability to put the reader into the mind of each character as they interact with each other before & after the murder.

If there is any disappointment in the book it is that the ending feels too abrupt. You are left wondering how each character copes in their lives in the aftermath of the weekend. In fact, this appears to be exactly the author's intention as the very last chapter introduces two new characters in a reflective counterpoint to the characters & relationships established prior to that point.

[James Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, maybe three and a half. It took me nearly halfway in to become interested enough to finish it. That's about the point of which I had finally sorted the characters out. It wasn't much longer until I had solved the mystery. This is somewhat of an old school whodunit but is told in a narrative from each of the eight suspects, before and after the murder. MacDonald's trademark psychological analysis is in fine form here as each character has a unique perception of the events, of themselves, and of the others respectively. While written in first person, what you'll read isn't what most people would reveal to others about themselves but rather a personal recounting of the events. Don't give up on this one, it's worth the read.

[Peter Sidell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A complex story of depravity

An exploration of a group of lives touched by a murder. The victim was a manipulative and powerful woman. The characters are all well drawn and mostly none are too appealing as individuals. In the end it can be seen as a cynical commentary on post world war 2 life in the United States - the disrution in values perhaps caused by the war.
Not my favorite JMD book but one can see him growing as an author. Interestingly he speaks of Cuernavaca where he had lived, and perhaps the lake front mansion was something he had seen where he spent his summers.

[Jonny Phake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, what an interesting book.
Wilma, a wealthy businesswoman invites some people to her cabin for the weekend. The guests are people who work for her in some way. People she kind of collected over there years, who she easily manipulates for her own twisted entertainment.
Each guest feels either deep love our hated for her.
At some point, one of her "toys" decides they've had enough.
I loved the characters, and how the story was told. With each chapter told through the eyes of a different character.
At times a little too many twists, and the characters can sometimes seem to unbelievable.
Very good read.

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wilma is a powerful corporate owner and invites eight underlings that depend on her goodwill for their livelihood to her lakeside mansion for a weekend party. Due to the need for cutbacks, some of them will get the axe, but we do no know who. Wilma drowns under suspicious circumstances and the novel becomes a murder mystery. The readers are subjected to both before and after the drowning; the inner thoughts, insecurities, and ramblings of all the guests. While I generally find MacDonald an easy and somewhat enjoyable read, this novel is my least favourite. None of the characters are interesting or sympathetic and I was barely able to finish the book.

[Mark Zodda · Rating 2 out of 5]

An unusual John D. MacDonald book with the story told from the points of view of multiple, generally unlikable characters. I mostly know the author from his Travis McGee series, but have found that many of his earlier works are worth reading. This library book was a bit weaker that most of his others that I have read, but was still okay. I prefer reading stories were there is a definite "hero," no matter how flawed. This story kind of got there, but . . . .

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes I go a year or two without reading anything by John D. MacDonald, and then I pick up one of these books and read it and, wow, I forgot how good this guy is.

This is sort of a Who Shot JR murder mystery, where everyone close to the victim had a motive to kill her, but when we learn the truth, it's still a pretty good twist.

It's a short book but he still manages to make his characters come alive.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second standalone JDM novel. Very different set up than my first read, Cape Fear.

The story was told through chapters of several different characters before and after the murder.

This was much more of a psychological review of the characters who all their reason to commit or not commit the murder.

[Chuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wilma throws a weekend party at her lake house for associates she has manipulated for years, and things get very dark.
MacDonald never disappoints, and in this novel he presents a disturbing depiction of human nature as Wilma's guests reveal themselves in first person accounts. Though unsavory to say the least, the characters are fascinating and the mystery is compelling.

[Al · Rating 5 out of 5]

I get tired of trying to read new authors, the majority of who do not make their characters alive to the reader. These authors need to read this one and get some pointers. This story reads like a series of character sketches woven together into a tale. Bravo.

[Harding Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

John D. has a way of captivating you, forcing you to jump in and tread water, then saving you by pulling you safely to shore. But instead of being grateful for the rescue, you’re left mourning for humanity. You may want to forget what you’ve been through. I can’t. Can you?

[Jorn Barger · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another honorable failure. Set, unusually, at a party for Hollywood losers thrown by a sort of past-her-prime Marilyn Monroe. Every loser gets a chapter or two establishing plausibly murderous motivation, but the murderer comes wholly inartistically out of left field.

[Kathleen Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome

What a great book. MacDonald is simply brilliant. This is my new favorite of his books. Highly recommended--suspenseful and scary.

[Missy Waddle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a huge fan of this one, but I did finish it. I found it hard to follow at times and not very entertaining.

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really weird set of characters = didn’t like any of them.

[January Kohli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Felt surprisingly contemporary.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly stream of consciousness narrative about self-important guests at a weekend of debauchery. How the author of Travis McGee stories could publish this stinker is a head-scratched.