Skylar in Yankeeland

Gregory Mcdonald was educated at Harvard University and, at the same time, started up an international yacht trouble-shooting business to help pay his way through college.

In 1964, Mcdonald was hired at the Boston Globe. In his seven years with them, he worked as a writer for the Sunday Magazine, a critic, the Arts and Humanities Editor, a critic-at-large columnist and a member of the Editorial Board. He was hired by publisher Davis Taylor to make the Globe more competitive. With Mcdonald, the readership soared but advertisers pulled out, in part because he wrote openly against the Vietnam War, one of the first journalists ever to do so, and for arguing for Civil, Women's and Gay Rights. It was said that a group of fellow employees beat him up in the Globe parking lot for the stance he took in a controversial time period.

Mcdonald has written many mysteries including the Fletch, Flynn, Son of Fletch and Skylar series. Some of the titles included in those series are Exits and Entrances, A World Too Wide, and Safekeeping. His novel The Brave was elected Trophees 813 Best Foreign Novel 1997 in France. Mcdonald has twice been the winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award, a recipient of humanitarian and peoples rights awards and is the past president of the Mystery Writers of America. He was suffering from cancer when he died on September 7, 2008 at the age of 71.

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