"The Accomplice" is an early story by John D. MacDonald (who never wrote anything actually titled Cape Fear, but more on that below), one which was not published till this issue of The Strand, though I'm not sure why MacDonald didn't circulate it. It's not one of his best stories, to be sure, but it's a reasonably good, even mildly thoughtful, bit of kitchen-sink hardboiled writing that will do his memory no damage. A not terribly bright and reasonably tough 17-year-old young man, recently hired at a small grocery store, catches the eye of the wife and co-proprietor of the shop, who encourages him to think about throwing in with her to dispose of her coworker/owner husband and what comes of that. It's rather deft, even if MacDonald was still becoming the JDM of not many years later and for the rest of his career, and the resolution isn't a hackneyed one, even more than 3/4ths of a century after its composition, as editor Andrew Gulli is happy to note. Gulli makes a regular habit of looking for "lost"/unpublished work by legendary crime-fiction writers (and some less well-known for CF) to highlight, and leads off his editorial in this issue by noting how he was introduced to MacDonald's work by the first (of two, so far) films called Cape Fear (based on JDM's brilliant novel The Executioners, a fact which Gulli fails to note, albeit some editions of the paperback reprints have all but replaced the novel's title with the films'). What's (also) problematic about this elision is that both films, very much including the better first adaptation, are dumbed-down considerably from JDM's novel, which involves two parents, and their family (not least their daughter), imperiled by a vicious ex-con seeking revenge against the attorney father...the parents become the Executioners of the title, and this is dealt with in the novel far more sensibly and engagingly than in either film, as well as with a gravitas that is completely absent from either film. (Also, Gulli notes in passing the similarity of approach and sophistication Ross Macdonald's work had in several key ways with JDM's, while somewhat adorably adding "no relation"--which the different spelling of the names might've tipped the casual reader to, though Gulli could also have noted that RM's actual name was Kenneth Millar.)  Nonetheless, it's good to have this story available, though one wonders if The Strand is doing all the business it might these days, as the 12/24 issue is still the current one, which I bought today from the increasingly barren newsstands of the most nearby B&N chain bookstore (picked up the "Dell"/Penny Press fiction magazines, and the current issues of DownBeat and The Nation), in what for me amounts to a lavish splurge these days. A "new" JDM story bumped out the half-done SSW I had planned; this current issue of The Strand asks newsstand proprietors to display it till May, so one presumably has some time yet to pick it up, where it hasn't sold out. For more of today's stories and assemblies of same (and at least one short play this week), please see Patti Abbott's blog. |
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