Have you ever gotten halfway through a book by a favorite author, put it down overnight and been reluctant to pick it up again? Not because it’s poorly written, but rather because you can feel where it’s going and you’re not going to like the way it turns out?

I’m reading one like that right now. It’s John D. MacDonald’s The Last One Left, which in all my years of reading his books I have missed until now. Considering it was written in 1967, that’s hard for me to believe.

I remember reading a review on the back of a paperback MacDonald which praised his ability to create a “warm sweet sense of horror.” This book has that quality in spades. The villain is one of the nastiest he ever imagined, even worse than Max Cady from “Cape Fear.”

If all you know of MacDonald is the Travis McGee books or the three science fiction ones, try to find some of his crime stories. He was a terrific writer of noir.