Book Review: A Purple Place for Dying by John D. MacDonald

In the third Travis McGee novel A Purple Place for Dying, McGee travels to an un-named state in the Southwest (likely New Mexico) to meet with the young wife of a local good ol' boy who has numerous business interests and holds all sorts of sway in the county. He is much older than his wife, and he was a friend and business partner of her father before he died. They were married after her father passed away a few years earlier.

The woman, Mona Yeoman, suspects that her husband, Jass, has bilked her out of most of the fortune her father left her when he died. McGee meets Mona Yeoman at the local airport and they drive out of town to a cabin she and her husband own. As they walk around outside the cabin and she explains the details of  how she wants McGee to help her, someone lines her up from a distance with a high-powered rifle and blows the back of her skull apart. The mystery begins.

The mystery also involves the man Mona Yeoman was having an affair with. His name is John Webb. He has disappeared, as has the corpse of Mona Yeoman. Upon reporting the murder of Mona to the local sheriff and then returning to the scene of the crime with him, McGee is stunned to see that her corpse is nowhere to be seen.

When McGee starts his own investigation, he meets Isobel Webb, the sister of John Webb, the man who is missing and now presumed dead. Isobel quickly becomes McGee's book-length challenge. The challenge is to try to uncover what makes this frigid woman tick. Yes, she's quite a beautiful woman, but she behaves like someone who has either experienced a bad relationship or no relationships at all. She dresses in a frumpy manner, and becomes haughty at any hint that a man is flirting with her. In lesser hands than MacDonald, this stereotype could quickly become cringe-worthy. Even so, it is a bit hard to wade through at times. Perhaps back in 1964 when the book was published, the notion was not so ridiculous that beautiful, prudish women needed a good seeing to so that they could behave the way women should behave.

Despite the absurdity of the frigid-woman stereotype, McGee and Isobel do engage in some entertaining scenes and dialogue. The character of Jass Yeoman is also explored to a reasonable degree. And there are some pretty good passages when things kick off and violence ensues. However, like the previous Travis McGee novel, Nightmare in Pink, the lack of insight into the people who have done the crimes is a serious weakness. As the book progresses, the mystery of who may have targeted Mona Yeoman and John Webb is relatively interesting. But after Jass Yeoman is subsequently murdered and it becomes clear that one of his illicit children and her half-brothers are behind the blundering attempt to ensure she is the only one in line for the inheritance, any tension that may have existed quickly dissipates. This is largely due to the fact that the characters that did the crimes are paper-thin caricatures.

As with the previous McGee novels, his cynical outlook on life and his numerous internal rants are what make the book worth reading. But while his views on women were previously quite entertaining if somewhat outdated and shamelessly chauvinistic, things take a nasty turn in A Purple Place for Dying. The constant comments about particular characters as well as women in general will definitely be a turn-off for some readers. Here are a few quotes from the book to demonstrate this. In this passage, McGee refers to Mona Yeoman, who is murdered in the first chapter:

So she was a big creamy bitch standing beside me in her tailored tight pants, and suddenly she was fallen cooling meat, and it was too damned fast.

About Isobel Webb:

Then it was the catalyst of things, of course. All of them. Night, death, fright, closeness, the security of the den. Male and female in the most primitive partnership of all. This was a twisted virgin, frightened by men, sex, pleasure, wanting—thinking it all of a conspiracy of evil against her. 

Later, McGee would seem to redeem himself somewhat in the eyes of modern feminists:

"Iz, if we get out of this. If I get you out of this. If you're ever in my arms again. Just one word will do it. Every time. No. That's all you have to say. No. And it stops. So don't say it as a nervous habit. Say it when you mean it. No. There's nothing wrong with my hearing."

But shortly after, McGee concludes his monologue on his honour code regarding women and negates some of that apparent chivalry:

"And you can say it any point you want, right up to the moment when we are, excuse the expression, coupled. From then on, it's Molly over the windmill."

In fact, a psychologist would probably have a field day analyzing the mind of John D. MacDonald vis-à-vis the words and actions of Travis McGee in A Purple Place for Dying. The height of the unpleasant attitudes towards women comes in the book's final pages when we find out the real motivation for murder by the illegitimate, half Mexican daughter of Jass Yeoman. You see, Yeoman had kept in touch with her, brought her into his home, and then decided to rape his own daughter. This information is delivered in a rather bland, matter-of-fact way, accompanied by one last caricature—this time of the woman who was raped—lunging at McGee like some kind of wild animal because he hints at this horrible information as a way to make her confess. Which she promptly does.

But this news about the rape (or perhaps many rapes over a period of time) really doesn't result in any negative comments from McGee towards Jass Yeoman. Throughout the book, McGee mentions that he really likes Jass. He's painted as a real man's man. And the rape revelation doesn't appear to change those feelings at all. In fact, McGee seems to have a hard-on for two male characters in the book: Jass Yeoman and the sheriff. Strange stuff.

I would still classify A Purple Place for Dying as well worth reading, if not for much of the writing, then at least as an exercise in seeing the progression of John D. MacDonald as a writer. The Travis McGee series has been widely praised, but the qualifier usually is that the quality of story telling improves greatly in subsequent novels.

Book Review: Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer

Rape is one of the most destructive, soul-destroying and contentious crimes of this or any other period in human history. No other crime elicits such a wide range of emotions, nor is there any other crime that is so burdened with myths, stereotypes and the views of a large percentage of the population who either genuinely don't feel rape is a serious crime, or are themselves rapists. This is all compounded by the rise of the internet and the ease with which multitudes of low-life pieces of human garbage can congregate online and validate each other's sick fantasies. In addition, an entire generation of ignoramuses weaned on the internet has acquired incredibly warped views about sex and intimacy.

The notion persists that rape is only "real" if committed by a stranger and only if it involves knives, guns or other weapons and repeated threats of harm (beyond the sexual assault itself). Also, most people have in their minds an idea of what "normal" and acceptable responses are to rape and other types of sexual assault. For example, many people believe that if a woman does not scream or violently resist her attacker, then it could not possibly be rape. In fact, researchers have found that reactions are often, if not usually, counter-intuitive to the collection of Hollywood-influenced stereotypes about how a victim should respond. Many victims freeze and are unable to do anything but wait until the horror of their assault is over. Many victims blame themselves in an attempt to push away reality and convince themselves the attack didn't occur or to lessen the psychological damage. And, yes, as hard as it may be to believe, many victims will maintain contact with their attackers (the likelihood of this is increased by the fact that most victims know their attackers).

In Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, Jon Krakauer describes five sexual assaults against female university students that take place in Missoula, Montana and the horrible effects suffered by the victims. Krakauer also details the actions taken by the university administration in each case, as well as the shockingly inadequate response of the local police and justice system. Because all the rapists are college football players, the crimes become a rallying cry for many of the local pieces of filth who have helped construct a subculture for the roided-up piece of shit athletes who think that they do not have to suffer any consequences for their criminal behaviour. Sadly, they are often correct in such thinking. It is instructive that out of all five cases, only one perpetrator was imprisoned, and that was mainly because he confessed on two separate occasions and both times his confessions were recorded.

The county attorney's office in Missoula at the time was staffed by some class-A bags of shit whose main concern was keeping their conviction rate as high as possible. To maintain the high conviction rate, they would only prosecute cases in which it was very likely they would get a guilty verdict. Because sexual assault cases are notoriously difficult to win, the county attorney's office simply refused to take on any but the most black and white cases (such as the one where there were two recorded confessions). The following passage indicates just how shameless and inept the Missoula Country Attorney's Office was in prosecuting rape crimes:

In one case described in the DOJ [Department of Justice] report, the Missoula police obtained a confession from a man who admitted raping a woman while she was unconscious. The Missoula police referred the case to the county attorney's office with a recommendation that the prosecutor charge the suspect with rape, but the country attorney's office declined to file any charges, citing "insufficient evidence."

The DOJ report mentioned in the above passage was the result of an investigation launched by the federal Department of Justice in response to a number of high-profile rape cases in Missoula (some of which are discussed in the book) and the perceived general ineptness of the Missoula County Attorney's Office in dealing with rape cases.

In a further example of what absolute filth staffed the county attorney's office, one fleck of shit resigned so she could defend the rapist who was initially charged when she was a prosecutor! In a town where most people metaphorically eat the shit out of the assholes of all the local college football players and anyone else associated with the team, it's hard not to feel that most people involved in maintaining law and order are more concerned about remaining popular and are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that they have the best shot at remaining in or attaining highly-paid, elected positions.

Krakauer is in top form in Missoula, equaling or surpassing his other great books such as Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, and Under the Banner of Heaven. I hesitate to call Missoula a true crime book because of the connotations that go along with that genre. In his crisp, engaging prose, Krakauer provides detailed narratives of the crimes and their fallout, and those passages are without doubt the most riveting parts of the book. But he also includes research that has been conducted about the trauma suffered by rape victims, the counter-intuitive behaviour of victims, the laws surrounding consent, the subculture of university athletics, and the criminal justice system and how the odds are stacked against victims of sexual assault. Of course, often the discussion, while not explicitly stated, is simply about ignorance, herd-mentality behaviour and most people's lack of critical thinking skills.

The most harrowing, despair-inducing, difficult passages to read involve the trauma suffered by rape victims. In this passage, Krakauer writes about a woman's self-destructive behaviour after being raped, which unfortunately validated many people's confirmation bias about what is an acceptable way for a victim to behave:

Laura suffered intensely for many years from being sexually assaulted. And her misery she said, was magnified by the stigma attached to the unhealthy compulsions that tyrannized her existence after the assaults. In this regard she was like many other rape victims. Their self-destructive behavior is often held up as "proof" that they are unreliable and morally compromised, or that they deserved to be raped.

Later in the book, Krakauer further discusses the research about rape victims and the fallout they experience:

When I mentioned this to Trisha Dittrik, the therapist who supervised our group, she told me she wasn't surprised. Rape and war, she explained, are among the most common causes of post-traumatic stress disorder, and survivors of sexual assault frequently exhibit many of the same symptoms and behavior as survivors of combat: Flashbacks, insomnia, nightmares, hypervigilance, isolation, depression, suicidal thoughts, outbursts of anger, unrelenting anxiety, and an inability to shake the feeling that the world is spinning out of control. 

If you're looking for just-the-facts reportage from Krakauer, you likely haven't read any of his books. He doesn't shy away from editorializing, or more accurately, he makes it clear exactly where he stands on the issues. That's not to suggest that Krakauer doesn't provide nuanced, balanced narratives of the events and people involved. He includes both sides of every account, interviews alleged rapists when they are willing, and delves into the topic of false accusations of rape. Yes, it does occur, although statistics and research indicate that it is a very small percentage of the vast number of sexual assaults that take place. Of course, that doesn't stop apologists from advancing the lie that false accusations are just as common as rapes. Strangely, the handful of high-profile cases in the past few years in which innocent men have been locked up for rapes that never happened, somehow resonate with most people in a more fundamental way than even the most brutal of sexual assaults in which the rapists are proven guilty beyond any doubt.

It's interesting that when trying to elicit understanding from the segment of the population who live confidently with the belief that they will never be victimized and who perpetuate the litany of myths about rape, it is often necessary to appeal to an imaginary situation in which their sisters, daughters or mothers are assaulted. Instead of direct empathy with victims, it's necessary to frame the issue in terms of loss of face, honour and a vague sense of male ownership regarding the people who suffer. Sure enough, in Missoula, a character witness who goes to bat for Beau Donaldson (the rapist depicted in the book who actually went to prison) only stops to ponder the seriousness of the crime he is essentially defending when a lawyer asks him if he would feel differently if his daughter had been the one who had been raped. When comparing the words of rape victims and rape apologists, it's also interesting to note that victims essentially focus on details of what happened while apologists use generalizations, cliches, logical fallacies and constant references to the invisible sky daddy.

Implicit in any discussion about rape is power, and Krakauer's book is no different. Rape is a crime of power. Unfortunately, the institutions tasked with providing assistance to rape victims and making rapists pay for their crimes, are part of the power structure in society. It's fair to ask: Is there some kind of affinity for rape (and all sorts of other crimes) within many of our institutions? Well, in any institution in society, a certain number of people with power seem to be rapists. Think of the Catholic church, residential schools, the military, police forces, university sports programs, and professional sports teams, to name a few. At the very least, institutions never do anything that will undermine themselves or reduce their power, and that often means a subculture in which predators can get away with their crimes without any concern for repercussions.

For example, in Canada, the federal police force, the RCMP, is currently facing a number of class-action lawsuits by current and former female officers who faced years of harassment and sometimes sexual assaults. A recent report bizarrely indicated that nudity is common in many RCMP offices. This is is some wackworld stuff. Until you consider the fact that the RCMP is an organization largely staffed with grade-12 educated individuals who carry guns and believe that they are above the law. The point is, how can we rely on corrupt, out-of-control, often extremely ignorant people who apparently embrace the misogynistic, sneering-at-rape-victim culture, to do an effective job of taking rape victims seriously and locking up rapists?

Whether people are attracted to power because of the impunity they know it will provide them, or whether power has an effect on some people in such a way that corrupts their character, is not completely clear. What is clear is that as human beings we have not come far enough in our understanding of power and how to more effectively monitor, regulate and sanction powerful people and institutions when necessary. What is also eminently clear is that few people adequately understand rape and the horrible effects suffered by its victims. Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town is not only extremely well-written and engaging, but is also a very important book that should be read by anyone who believes in justice, empathy and the importance of doing all we can to help victims of sexual assault.