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Illinois! Illinois! |
Modern Illinois: 1945-1976 |
1430. MacDONALD, JOHN DANN, 1916-1986.
Death Trap, [by] John D. MacDonald. Greenwich, Conn[ecticut:] Fawcett Publications, Member of American Book Publishers Council, Inc., [1957.] 191p. (Gold Medal Books)
Travis McGee postpones a vacation to help a young man sentenced to die for a trumped-up rape-murder charge, and comes frighteningly close to becoming a murder victim himself. The setting is a small college town in Illinois.
N. Y. Times Book Review, 3/10/1977, p. 37.
1431. MacDONALD, JOHN DANN, 1916-1986.
One Fearful Yellow Eye, [by] John D. MacDonald. Greenwich, Conn[ecticut:] Fawcett Publications, Inc.; Member of American Book Publishers Council, Inc., [1966.] 224p. (A Fawcett Gold Medal Book)
A bizarre case of kidnapping, extortion, and murder attracts Travis McGee to Chicago to have a crack at solving the case, even though the trail is nineteen months old.
Books Today, 12/4/1966, p. 34. N. Y. Times Book Review, 1/29/1967, p. 60. Publishers Weekly, 11/14/1966, p 112.
1432. McGIVERN, WILLIAM PETER, 1927-1982.
But Death Runs Faster, by William P. McGivern. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1948. 231p. (Red Badge Detective)1433. McGIVERN, WILLIAM PETER, 1927-1982.Steven Blake, a Chicago magazine editor, tells his version of the circumstances surrounding the death of his assistant, Bryon Crofield, in an intriguing tale that leads the reader to believe that the writer is the murderer. A winner of the $1,000 Red Badge Mystery Prize, But Death Runs Faster is first-class reading for the mystery enthusiast.
Book Review Digest, 1948, p. 530.
Heaven Ran Last, by William P. McGivern. Author of "But Death Runs Faster." New York: Dodd Mead & Company, [1949.] 247p. (This is A Red Badge Mystery)1434. McGIVERN, WILLIAM PETER, 1927-1982.Involved with the wife of a friend, Johnny Ford plots to rid himself of his competition through an intricate murder scheme. The scheme fails, Johnny panics and soon finds himself matching wits with Inspector Harrigan of the Chicago Police Department.
Book Review Digest, 1949, p. 586.
Very Cold for May, by William P. McGivern. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, [1950.] 246p. (This is a Red Badge Mystery)1435. MacQUEEN, JAMES WILLIAM, 1900-1954.Chicago public relations man Jake Harrison accepts the job of whitewashing the image of industrialist Dan Riordan accused of manufacturing and selling inferior weapons for military use during World War II. Jake begins having second thoughts when witnesses begin to die.
Book Review Digest, 1950, p. 593.
But the Patient Died, [by] James G. Edwards, M. D. [pseud.] Garden City, N[ew] Y[ork:] Published for The Crime Club by Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1948. 189p.1436. MAJERUS, JANET, 1936-Randolph Toomes' emergency operation for a perforated ulcer arouses no interest at Monmouth Memorial Hospital until a concerned friend suggests that he might have been the victim of a murder attempt. Hospital lab work confirms suspicions, but not before a successful murder is staged. Authentic details of the functioning of a large city hospital, along with petty jealousies, personal feuding, public and private affairs, and routines of employees give But the Patient Died appeal to a larger audience than many run-of-the-mill mysteries. The scene is the Chicago area.
Book Review Digest, 1948, p. 540.
1437. MALING, ARTHUR GORDON, 1923-Grandpa and Frank, [by] Janet Majerus. Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, [1976.] 192p.
An eccentric old man threatened with being sent to the county home and two thirteen-year-olds determined to save him from his fate act out a poignant drama of love and faith in a 1947 rural Illinois setting. In the spring of 1947, George MacDermott suffers a stroke that somewhat affects his mental acuity, and his son seizes the opportunity to have the old man declared incompetent and put into the county home. Sarah, George's almost-thirteen-year-old granddaughter, realizes what is happening but can make no one believe her, so in desperation she and Grandpa, with the neighbor boy Joey Martin, strike out for Chicago in a Model-A Ford truck, with a picnic basket full of food and less than $10.00 among them, in an effort to find Sarah's Aunt Clara who will help stave off what seems inevitable. The novel recalls many half-forgotten memories of rural America, from the tribulations of party line telephones to the culinary delights of 20¢ worth of cheese and crackers and an Orange Crush purchased at the general store. But the major delight of the novel is the characterization, especially that of Sarah, whose love for her grandfather knows no bounds. As the novel draws to a close, we see Sarah, half-a-year older, enrolled in an exclusive boarding school, but making preparations to sneak away in the night to again fly to her grandfather's defense.
Booklist, 4/15/1976, p. 1167. Kirkus, 1/15/1976, p. 91. N. Y. Times Book Review, 4/11/1976, p. 36. Publishers Weekly, 2/19/1976, p. 92. School Library Journal, 9/1976, p. 44.
Bent Man, [by] Arthur Maling. New York, Evanston, San Francisco, [and] London: Harper & Row, Publishers, [1975.] 227p.
Despite a terminal illness, Walter Jackson, a middle-aged Chicago insurance salesman, rallies his fighting spirit to aid his son when the youth becomes involved with a ring of jewel thieves.
Book Review Digest, 1975, p. 824.
1438. MALING, ARTHUR GORDON, 1923-
Decoy, [by] Arthur Maling. New York, Evanston, and London: Harper & Row, Publishers, [1969.] 199p.1439. MALING, ARTHUR GORDON, 1923-The author's cool, deliberate style lends itself well to the telling of this suspenseful narrative of a man who is duped into the role of decoy, then hunted down by members of a powerful crime syndicate. The novel is set in Chicago and Mexico.
Book Review Digest, 1969, p. 857.
Go-Between, by Arthur Maling. New York, Evanston, and London: Harper & Row, Publishers, [1970.] 204p.1440. MALOFF, SAUL, 1922-Pete Lambert, son of a Chicago business tycoon, steals an incriminating report from his estranged father's desk following a bitter quarrel. When the report falls into the wrong hands, the senior Lambert calls upon Pete's best friend to intermediate. Two murders, a chase to St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, and the final exposure of the plot against Lambert bring this slow-starting suspense novel to a rousing finish.
Kirkus, 8/15/1970, p. 908. Library Journal, 11/1/1970, p. 3811. N. Y. Times Book Review, 11/15/1970, p. 64. Publishers Weekly, 8/17/1970, p. 49.
Happy Families, by Saul Maloff. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, [1968.] 375p.1441. MAYER, JANE ROTHSCHILD, 1903-At middle age, Robert Kalb's life is in disarray. Divorced, dissatisfied with work, obsessed with sex, discontented with the world in general and himself in particular, Kalb is pushed into action when his seventeen-year-old daughter runs away from home. The search for her takes Kalb through many offbeat areas of New York and Chicago, bringing him into contact with numbers of alienated daughters and disoriented fathers, and resulting in considerable soul-searching and philosophizing. Happy Families is a brilliant representation of American popular culture, late 1960s variety, displaying the hostility, cynicism, despondency, and disorientation that typified the times.
Book Review Digest, 1968, p. 881.
The Year of the White Trees, [by] Jane Mayer. New York: Random House, [1958.] 282p.1442. MEANS, MARY, and SANDERS, THEODORE.The Year of the White Trees is a light romance covering one year in the life of Anneira Veck, daughter of a prominent Chicago family. The love affair between Anneira and violinist Ellis Springbok makes rather ordinary reading, but the story is redeemed by its detailed, accurate Chicago setting and description of Chicago's musical society.
Book Review Digest, 1958, p. 736.
The Beckoning Shadow, by Denis Scott, [pseud.] Author of Murder Makes a Villain. Indianapolis [and] New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Publishers, [1946.] 288p.1443. MOLLOY, PAUL, 1920-Mike James, who first appeared in Scott's, Murder Makes a Villain, returns with a missing persons case that quickly changes to murder.
Book Review Digest, 1946, p. 731.
1444. MOORE, DONALD LLOYD.A Pennant for the Kremlin, by Paul Molloy. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964. 185p.
The author, a Chicago sports writer, has written a madcap novel of baseball, big business, and international relations in the 1960s. Armistead E. Childers, in a fit of pique over the United States' poor relations with Russia, wills his entire fortune, including the Chicago White Sox, to the Soviet Union. Under Russian management and decidedly Russian influence, strange things begin to happen with the team, but the changes begin to take on an aura of logic as the season moves toward fall and the opening of the World Series.
Library Journal, 11/1/1964, p. 4388. N. Y. Times Book Review, 10/4/1964, p. 41.
Zipline, River Park, by Donald Lloyd Moore. Boston: Branden Press Publishers, [1976.] 135p.1445. MORGAN, ALBERT EDWARD, 1920-Donald Moore draws on his years of experience as a mail carrier in River Forest, Illinois, to pull together this collection of anecdotal material about the daily routine at the post office in fictitious River Park. The brief chapters touch only lightly on the stamina of the delivery men, emphasizing instead the homey, sometimes earthy humor, and the day-to-day banter related to little incidents along the route and among the seven men and one woman working together in the post office building. There is no great literary value here, and only a glimmer of a plot, but this little volume provides an interesting and seldom seen glimpse of the work of today's mail carriers.
The Whole World Is Watching, [by] Al Morgan. New York: Stein and Day, Publishers, [1972.] 252p.1446. MOTLEY, WILLARD, 1909-1965.This memorable and frightening novel makes the riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention even more vivid than they were on the television news reports. The author, with seven years' experience as the producer of the popular Today show, writes with an unmistakably sophisticated touch about the effects of the demonstrations and police brutality on the producer of a similar show, and on his tough, well-seasoned staff. Morgan's fictionalized account of an incredible week in Chicago's history becomes an entirely credible and unusually powerful story with a message that overflows with redeeming social value.
Best Sellers, 9/1/1972, p. 249. Publishers Weekly, 7/24/1972, p. 72.
1447. MUNDIS, JERROLD J., 1941-Let No Man Write My Epitaph, [by] Willard Motley. New York: Random House, [1958.] 467p.
Born out of wedlock in the slums of Chicago, Nick Romano begins to learn of loneliness and survival at an age when other children are learning to talk. His father, dead in the electric chair, his mother hopelessly addicted to drugs, Nick becomes dependent on a small group of neighbor men who shelter and care for him through his childhood and youth. Let No Man Write My Epitaph is the poignant story of Nick Romano's growth to manhood, his own bout with drugs, and his return from the void of drug addiction. This sequel to Knock on Any Door is harsh, sentimental, depressing, and ugly. It may become too emotional for some. Yet the story rings true, and the characters are not easily forgotten.
Book Review Digest, 1958, p. 782.
1448. NEWMAN, CHARLES HAMILTON, 1938-Gerhardt's Children, [by] Jerrold Mundis. New York: Atheneum, 1976. 305p.
A complex, passionate, and violent family is described, analyzed, and painstakingly explained on the occasion of the untimely death by cancer of one of its members, Nora, a mother of two adolescents. Nora had been abandoned by her mother at the age of four and reared by an aunt and uncle, and it is her cousin Garvin, who grew up with her and feels a brotherly kinship to her, who tells the story. In little, disconnected incidents and sketches jumping back and forth between families and generations, he gradually weaves together a picture of a troubled family struggling blindly against a heritage heavy with malevolence. Five generations of this Chicago-based German Catholic family are included, from Idalla, the unbelievably cruel and despotic matriarch who came here as a young immigrant, to Garvin's own young son. There are some lucid passages, some ugly scenes, and much probing analysis in this emotional exploration of a family's deep-seated feuds. The combined effect is a very personal expression of grief, pain, compassion, and hope for the future.
Booklist, 10/1/1976, p. 236. Critic, Winter/1976, p. 76. Kirkus, 6/1/1976, p. 653. Library Journal, 6/15/1976, p. 1448. N. Y. Times, 8/9/1976, p. 21. Publishers Weekly, 6/21/1976, p. 85. Southwest Review, 8/21/1976, p. 37.
1448. NEWMAN, CHARLES HAMILTON, 1938-New Axis; or, the "Little Ed" Stories, An Exhibition [by] Charles Newman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company; The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1966. 175p.
New Axis is a novel formed from a series of short stories that describe various episodes in the lives of Little Ed D's suburban Chicago family. The stories deal with a variety of topics ranging from an uneventful free day at home for Mrs. D, to a highly charged conversation between Little Ed and a former girl friend, concerning an occasion during their adolescence when they had slept together. Autobiographical in tone, the novel spans a generation and includes some good descriptive passages of Chicago and area scenery.
CONTENTS: Montz My Son.--The Scales of Justice.--Feedback.--The Preserve.--Lipservice.--A Flooding.--The Greco-Jewish War.--The Indian Maiden.--Fathers and Sons Day.--The Hair Cut.
Book Review Digest, 1966, p. 884.
1450. NIELSEN, HELEN BERNIECE, 1918-The Promise Keeper, A Tephramancy by Charles Newman. Divers Narratives on the Economics of Current Morals in Lieu of a Psychology, Here Embodied in an Approved Text Working Often in Spite of Itself. Certain Profane Stoical Paradoxes Explained, Literary Amusements Liberally Interspersed, Partitioned with Documents & Conditioned by Imagoes, Hearty Family-Type Fare, Modern Decor, Free Parking. New York: Simon and Schuster, [1971.] 249p.
Chicago and contemporary society are vividly exposed with exaggerated images in this acidly satirical novel about a promising young broker, Sam Hooper, who tries to make sense out of a senseless world. Sam consults his company psychiatrist, tolerates his nervy maid, has an affair with the wife of an artist-photographer, and becomes absorbed in reading a true-adventure book on sailing around the world. Then the pace accelerates, and suspense mounts for the reader who has persisted past the half-way mark, but those who don't care for semantic challenges--as suggested in the novel's extended title--or don't care for non-family type fare, may have long since closed the book.
Hudson Review, Fall/1971, p. 539. Kirkus, 3/1/1971, p. 254. Library Journal, 6/1/1971, p. 2009. N. Y. Times Book Review, 8/1/1971, p. 4. New Republic, 9/18/1971, p. 28. Publishers Weekly, 4/26/1971, p. 54.
Gold Coast Nocturne, by Helen Nielsen. New York: Ives Washburn, Inc., [1951.] 203p.1451. NORRIS, HOKE, 1913-1977.A casual pick-up in a Chicago bar is revealed to be the missing daughter of murdered financier, Darius Brunner II; and $5,000 found in his coat pocket the next day indicates that Casey Morrow may be more involved than he would like to be.
Book Review Digest, 1951, p. 657.
It's Not Far, But I Don't Know the Way, by Hoke Norris. Chicago: The Swallow Press, Inc., [1969.] 155p.
David Elliot and Joyce Harper meet quite by accident on Chicago's Michigan Avenue one afternoon and renew their acquaintance after years of separation. Lovers in the past, their love is rekindled and is made more compelling by her impending death from cancer and by the fast pace of the city that surrounds them. Chicago is the setting for this modern day love story that examines current attitudes toward life and death.
Book Review Digest, 1970, p. 1053.
