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Travis McGee #12
The Long Lavender Look
A lovely young girl steps in front of Travis McGee's headlights. McGee misses the girl but lands in ten feet of swamp water. As he's limping along the deserted road, someone in an old truck takes a few shots at him. And, when he goes to the local sheriff to complain, the intrepid Travis McGee finds himself arrested and charged with murder. And he can't help but ask himself, is this what they call Southern hospitality...?
318 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
505 people are currently reading
1356 people want to read
About the author
John D. MacDonald
564 books1,368 followersJohn D. MacDonald was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, and educated at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Syracuse and Harvard, where he took an MBA in 1939. During WW2, he rose to the rank of Colonel, and while serving in the Army and in the Far East, sent a short story to his wife for sale, successfully. He served in the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations. After the war, he decided to try writing for a year, to see if he could make a living. Over 500 short stories and 70 novels resulted, including 21 Travis McGee novels.
Following complications of an earlier heart bypass operation, MacDonald slipped into a coma on December 10 and died at age 70, on December 28, 1986, in St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was survived by his wife Dorothy (1911-1989) and a son, Maynard.
In the years since his death MacDonald has been praised by authors as diverse as Stephen King, Spider Robinson, Jimmy Buffett, Kingsley Amis and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.. Thirty-three years after his passing the Travis McGee novels are still in print.
Following complications of an earlier heart bypass operation, MacDonald slipped into a coma on December 10 and died at age 70, on December 28, 1986, in St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was survived by his wife Dorothy (1911-1989) and a son, Maynard.
In the years since his death MacDonald has been praised by authors as diverse as Stephen King, Spider Robinson, Jimmy Buffett, Kingsley Amis and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.. Thirty-three years after his passing the Travis McGee novels are still in print.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 209 reviews
April 24, 2017
The twelfth Travis McGee novel finds McGee and his closest friend, Meyer, the economist, returning to Fort Lauderdale from a wedding. It's late at night; they've taken a wrong turn and are driving down a narrow road in Cypress County, out in the boondocks, trying to make their way back to the Tamiami Trail and home. Out of nowhere, a woman runs right out in front of Miss Agnes, McGee's venerable blue Rolls Royce pickup. McGee swerves and misses the woman by inches, but he loses control of the truck and it winds up underwater in a ditch.
McGee and Meyer manage to escape, but there's no sign of the woman they nearly hit. With no other choice, they begin walking back up the road to a garage they passed earlier. And, as if the night's not gone badly enough already, as they're walking back up the highway, some jerk takes a couple of shots at them. They manage to escape that menace as well and make it back to the garage, where the local sheriff appears and promptly arrests them on suspicion of murder.
Well, crap.
It's a long and involved story involving an armored truck robbery several years earlier. The thieves and the money disappeared, but the sheriff seems to think that the murdered man was involved in the robbery, that McGee and Meyer were his accomplices, and that they killed the guy after a falling out.
Naturally, it's going to take some time to sort this out, and obviously, the only guy to do it is Travis McGee. Along the way, there will, of course, be a woman in desperate need of the kind of attention that only McGee can provide, and McGee will have to spend a lot of time philosophizing about his conquest of the woman and examining his conscience and his character.
This is a pretty good tale and, although it's clearly dated, it's not quite as bad as some of the others in the series. As is the case with all of the McGee novels, the reader has to check his or her twenty-first century sensibilities at the door, especially those regarding gender. But if you can allow yourself to do so for two or three hours, this is a fun way to spend an evening.
McGee and Meyer manage to escape, but there's no sign of the woman they nearly hit. With no other choice, they begin walking back up the road to a garage they passed earlier. And, as if the night's not gone badly enough already, as they're walking back up the highway, some jerk takes a couple of shots at them. They manage to escape that menace as well and make it back to the garage, where the local sheriff appears and promptly arrests them on suspicion of murder.
Well, crap.
It's a long and involved story involving an armored truck robbery several years earlier. The thieves and the money disappeared, but the sheriff seems to think that the murdered man was involved in the robbery, that McGee and Meyer were his accomplices, and that they killed the guy after a falling out.
Naturally, it's going to take some time to sort this out, and obviously, the only guy to do it is Travis McGee. Along the way, there will, of course, be a woman in desperate need of the kind of attention that only McGee can provide, and McGee will have to spend a lot of time philosophizing about his conquest of the woman and examining his conscience and his character.
This is a pretty good tale and, although it's clearly dated, it's not quite as bad as some of the others in the series. As is the case with all of the McGee novels, the reader has to check his or her twenty-first century sensibilities at the door, especially those regarding gender. But if you can allow yourself to do so for two or three hours, this is a fun way to spend an evening.
June 22, 2016
In one of the earlier Travis McGee books he and his best buddy Meyer are out fishing when someone dumps a woman off a bridge in front of them, and this gets them mixed up with a bunch of criminals. In this one a woman runs across the road which causes them to wreck and gets them involved in more murderous mayhem. These guys are like magnets for women randomly appearing and causing shit storms.
McGee and Meyer are driving home on a Florida back country road late at night after attending a wedding. Suddenly, a half naked woman runs in front of the car and they end up in a canal. There’s no sign of the girl so they start hiking only to be shot at by a passing pick-up. When they finally reach a gas station they’re immediately arrested for the murder of a man named Frank Baither, and Meyer gets the shit beaten out of him by one of the deputies while in police custody.
And you thought you were having a bad day.
Pretty typical McGee with the self-described salvage consultant getting mixed up in a mess of small town murder and secrets involving the loot from a heist. As usual, we’re treated to McGee’s musings on life and people as well as some horribly dated stuff regarding sex and women. Since this one involves one character blackmailing several women into acting as whores, we also get McGee’s thoughts on prostitution. It's not pretty.
Unfortunately, this one also sags a bit in the mystery department too. MacDonald got a little too cute for his own good with murder after murder and trying to figure out who killed who as well as enough small town scandals to keep the fellas at the barber shop gossiping for years.
This results in the whole initial mystery coming undone in the last act and left me scratching my head. Overall, this one started off strong but faded into a mess of too many characters and too many schemes. This was a reread via one of the newly released audio books, and the narration is still very strong by Robert Petkoff.
McGee and Meyer are driving home on a Florida back country road late at night after attending a wedding. Suddenly, a half naked woman runs in front of the car and they end up in a canal. There’s no sign of the girl so they start hiking only to be shot at by a passing pick-up. When they finally reach a gas station they’re immediately arrested for the murder of a man named Frank Baither, and Meyer gets the shit beaten out of him by one of the deputies while in police custody.
And you thought you were having a bad day.
Pretty typical McGee with the self-described salvage consultant getting mixed up in a mess of small town murder and secrets involving the loot from a heist. As usual, we’re treated to McGee’s musings on life and people as well as some horribly dated stuff regarding sex and women. Since this one involves one character blackmailing several women into acting as whores, we also get McGee’s thoughts on prostitution. It's not pretty.
Unfortunately, this one also sags a bit in the mystery department too. MacDonald got a little too cute for his own good with murder after murder and trying to figure out who killed who as well as enough small town scandals to keep the fellas at the barber shop gossiping for years.
This results in the whole initial mystery coming undone in the last act and left me scratching my head. Overall, this one started off strong but faded into a mess of too many characters and too many schemes. This was a reread via one of the newly released audio books, and the narration is still very strong by Robert Petkoff.
May 25, 2020
5 Stars. Excellent.
Travis is truly a philosopher-detective, my favourite of all fictional characters. Travis is also a link to the past, to a Florida before the poison of man, before the destruction of commercial greed.
As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you.
As best I can tell, there is no "Cypress County" in Florida.
Vintage Rolls Royce, "Miss Agnes" pickup truck
Full size image here
Betsy Kapp's Colt.38 Special
Full size image here
45%
I must say that McGee's and Betsy's plan here sounds pretty cockeyed to me.
McGee's .44 magnum carbine
Full size image here
In the last pages of the book, a delightful old friend of McGee turns up at the Busted Flush. Lovely. Delicious. Quite wonderful.
Quite a few good quotes:
I hate to kill a raccoon. Urban Florida is using the rabies myth to justify wiping them out, with guns, traps, and poison. The average raccoon is more affable, intelligent, and tidy than the average meathead who wants them eliminated, and is usually a lot better looking. It is both sad and ironic that the areas where the raccoon are obliterated are soon overrun with snakes.
-
The mosquitoes had welted us abundantly, but I knew the evidence would disappear quickly. There is a kind of semi-immunity you acquire if you live long enough in mosquito country. The itch is caused by the blood-thinner they inject, so they can suck the mixed fluids up their narrow snouts. But the redbug bites are something else. No immunity there. We both had them from ankles to groin. The itch of the chigger bite lasts so long that the mythology says they lay eggs under the skin. Not so. It is a very savage itch, and the only way to cut the weeks down to a few days is to use any preparation containing a nerve-deadening agent, along with a cortisone spray.
-
Then we smiled at each other and I said my polite good-by. He was like King Sturnevan, long retired from combat, but he still had the moves. No wind left, but he could give you a very bad time for the first two rounds.
-
The sun was down and the porch faced the western sky, faced a band of red so intense it looked as if all the far cities of the world were burning. It will probably look much like that when they do burn.
-
There are some extraordinarily cruel men in the primitive rural areas of India who travel from village to village curing cataracts for a few rupees. Their surgical tool is a long, very slender, very sharp and hard thorn. They insert it from the side, behind the lens, and puncture the lens capsule. The cloudy fluid leaks into the eye itself and is replaced, or diluted, by the clear fluid within the eye. Sight is restored. It is a miracle. In sixty to ninety days the patient becomes totally and permanently blind, but by then the magician is a dozen villages away, busy with new miracles. Perhaps they do not think of themselves as cruel men. In a country where the big city syndicates purchase children, and carefully maim and disflgure them in vividly memorable ways, and distribute them by truck throughout the city each morning to sit on busy sidewalks with begging bowls, and collect them at dusk as impersonally as one might empty coin machines, cruelty itself is a philosophical abstraction.
-
So I stood there, in that absolute and lonely privacy that exists only in the middle of a crush of strangers and a deafening din of festive voices and festive rock staring at the hefty fleshy pumping of the tireless blonde, and wondering why I should feel that too many important parts were missing from my equation.
-
Her smile, as she stood up, was the distillation of several hundred motion pictures, refined in the loneliness of the bathroom mirror, born of a hunger for romance, for magic, for tremulous, yearning love. This was the meet-cute episode, immortalized by all the Doris Days, unexpected treasure for a thirty-summers blonde with something childish-girlish about her mouth, something that would never tighten into maturity. It would always yearn, always hope, always pretend - and it would always be used.
-
In a song:
... listening to Maria Toledo breathe Portuguese love words ...
-
She looked at me and I suddenly knew exactly what Mona Lisa was thinking about. It was exactly the same smile, though on a face far more to my liking.
Lovely ending.
Bonus. From the 1970 "Darker Than Amber" movie starring Rod Taylor, pictures of the producers' ideas of McGee's "The Busted Flush":
Full size image here
Full size image here
Full size image here
And finally, two great blogs about John D. MacDonald, McGee and the rumoured-never-written novel where McGee dies"...
The Birth of Travis McGee (fascinating)
http://thetrapofsolidgold.blogspot.co...
"Black Border for McGee" (rumours surrounding a final book, never published)
http://thetrapofsolidgold.blogspot.co...
Travis is truly a philosopher-detective, my favourite of all fictional characters. Travis is also a link to the past, to a Florida before the poison of man, before the destruction of commercial greed.
As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you.
As best I can tell, there is no "Cypress County" in Florida.
Vintage Rolls Royce, "Miss Agnes" pickup truck
Full size image here
Betsy Kapp's Colt.38 Special
Full size image here
45%
I must say that McGee's and Betsy's plan here sounds pretty cockeyed to me.
McGee's .44 magnum carbine
Full size image here
In the last pages of the book, a delightful old friend of McGee turns up at the Busted Flush. Lovely. Delicious. Quite wonderful.
Quite a few good quotes:
I hate to kill a raccoon. Urban Florida is using the rabies myth to justify wiping them out, with guns, traps, and poison. The average raccoon is more affable, intelligent, and tidy than the average meathead who wants them eliminated, and is usually a lot better looking. It is both sad and ironic that the areas where the raccoon are obliterated are soon overrun with snakes.
-
The mosquitoes had welted us abundantly, but I knew the evidence would disappear quickly. There is a kind of semi-immunity you acquire if you live long enough in mosquito country. The itch is caused by the blood-thinner they inject, so they can suck the mixed fluids up their narrow snouts. But the redbug bites are something else. No immunity there. We both had them from ankles to groin. The itch of the chigger bite lasts so long that the mythology says they lay eggs under the skin. Not so. It is a very savage itch, and the only way to cut the weeks down to a few days is to use any preparation containing a nerve-deadening agent, along with a cortisone spray.
-
Then we smiled at each other and I said my polite good-by. He was like King Sturnevan, long retired from combat, but he still had the moves. No wind left, but he could give you a very bad time for the first two rounds.
-
The sun was down and the porch faced the western sky, faced a band of red so intense it looked as if all the far cities of the world were burning. It will probably look much like that when they do burn.
-
There are some extraordinarily cruel men in the primitive rural areas of India who travel from village to village curing cataracts for a few rupees. Their surgical tool is a long, very slender, very sharp and hard thorn. They insert it from the side, behind the lens, and puncture the lens capsule. The cloudy fluid leaks into the eye itself and is replaced, or diluted, by the clear fluid within the eye. Sight is restored. It is a miracle. In sixty to ninety days the patient becomes totally and permanently blind, but by then the magician is a dozen villages away, busy with new miracles. Perhaps they do not think of themselves as cruel men. In a country where the big city syndicates purchase children, and carefully maim and disflgure them in vividly memorable ways, and distribute them by truck throughout the city each morning to sit on busy sidewalks with begging bowls, and collect them at dusk as impersonally as one might empty coin machines, cruelty itself is a philosophical abstraction.
-
So I stood there, in that absolute and lonely privacy that exists only in the middle of a crush of strangers and a deafening din of festive voices and festive rock staring at the hefty fleshy pumping of the tireless blonde, and wondering why I should feel that too many important parts were missing from my equation.
-
Her smile, as she stood up, was the distillation of several hundred motion pictures, refined in the loneliness of the bathroom mirror, born of a hunger for romance, for magic, for tremulous, yearning love. This was the meet-cute episode, immortalized by all the Doris Days, unexpected treasure for a thirty-summers blonde with something childish-girlish about her mouth, something that would never tighten into maturity. It would always yearn, always hope, always pretend - and it would always be used.
-
In a song:
... listening to Maria Toledo breathe Portuguese love words ...
-
She looked at me and I suddenly knew exactly what Mona Lisa was thinking about. It was exactly the same smile, though on a face far more to my liking.
Lovely ending.
Bonus. From the 1970 "Darker Than Amber" movie starring Rod Taylor, pictures of the producers' ideas of McGee's "The Busted Flush":
Full size image here
Full size image here
Full size image here
And finally, two great blogs about John D. MacDonald, McGee and the rumoured-never-written novel where McGee dies"...
The Birth of Travis McGee (fascinating)
http://thetrapofsolidgold.blogspot.co...
"Black Border for McGee" (rumours surrounding a final book, never published)
http://thetrapofsolidgold.blogspot.co...
February 25, 2018
"The delusion of total freedom of will is the worst cage of all. And it gets cold in there."
- John D. MacDonald, The Long Lavender Look
It is always nice to return to a solid McGee novel. None are Shakespeare and the worst are like bad James Bond novels, but when MacDonald is on his game, he writes great narrative with interesting sidebars on economics, relationships, and people. This is the 12th of his Travis McGee novels and probably the 16th McGee I've read (I've got about 5 left). I've also read other MacDonald novels that I've liked about equally well. I return to them because they are fast, entertaining, and don't require much. They are desert.
This one centers on a small Florida town with a complicated Sheriff, several sub-optimal deputies, and many many troubled ladies. Probably, the least welcome part of this book is MacDonald's exposition on hookers. It is a bit too cyncial, even for John D. MacDonald fans.
- John D. MacDonald, The Long Lavender Look
It is always nice to return to a solid McGee novel. None are Shakespeare and the worst are like bad James Bond novels, but when MacDonald is on his game, he writes great narrative with interesting sidebars on economics, relationships, and people. This is the 12th of his Travis McGee novels and probably the 16th McGee I've read (I've got about 5 left). I've also read other MacDonald novels that I've liked about equally well. I return to them because they are fast, entertaining, and don't require much. They are desert.
This one centers on a small Florida town with a complicated Sheriff, several sub-optimal deputies, and many many troubled ladies. Probably, the least welcome part of this book is MacDonald's exposition on hookers. It is a bit too cyncial, even for John D. MacDonald fans.
March 13, 2025
There are certain writers that seem to write just for me, and by writing what they wrote, they became a part of my life. Some wrote literature. Some wrote stories. But they all spoke to me about the meaning and purpose of life. John D. MacDonald was the first of these writers. I’ve moved on to other writers and other stories since then, many of them better than MacDonald’s Travis McGee series. But this is where it started: a witnessing of art imitating life (with a bit of excitement mixed in).
Travis McGee, in being MacDonald’s creation, defined the state of chaotic good that was life as I saw it unfold before me as a teenager. There is no purity in life; only comparative goods and evils; and a balance sheet that keeps score until the end.
The Long Lavender Look is certainly not the best in the series. It sits somewhere in the lower-middle. McGee finds himself in central Florida for the duration of the novel and there’s just not that much excitement in central Florida. The McGee philosophy and outlook are there, but they get bogged down in the swamplands; as do the characters of which there are too many. But as a means of revisiting a life-long imaginary friend, The Long Lavender Look allowed me to do just that.
Travis McGee, in being MacDonald’s creation, defined the state of chaotic good that was life as I saw it unfold before me as a teenager. There is no purity in life; only comparative goods and evils; and a balance sheet that keeps score until the end.
The Long Lavender Look is certainly not the best in the series. It sits somewhere in the lower-middle. McGee finds himself in central Florida for the duration of the novel and there’s just not that much excitement in central Florida. The McGee philosophy and outlook are there, but they get bogged down in the swamplands; as do the characters of which there are too many. But as a means of revisiting a life-long imaginary friend, The Long Lavender Look allowed me to do just that.
September 27, 2011
This one, #12, is the latest in my publication-order read of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series, which I somehow missed out on for the first 40 or so years of my life.
The series, with Trav as the philosophical bare-knuckle hero, is set up according to the normal tropes of the PI genre, except instead of being a PI McGee is a "salvage expert"--operating without a license, he helps people "recover lost property" and, if he's successful, takes 50% of the profit. I felt that the first in the series, THE DEEP BLUE GOOD-BYE, was one of the best "hard-boiled" novels I've ever read, especially in the (loosely) PI genre. Since then, I've enjoyed them all, though some (DARKER THAN AMBER) have been much better than others (NIGHTMARE IN PINK). (I am also, I should note, not a huge fan of the PI genre, if that means anything.)
My pal Barney has promised me that the series transforms pretty significantly "from standard Gold Medal PI-type stuff" to "something very different" around (I think he said) #17, THE EMPTY COPPER SEA. However, I can already see changes afoot. In the last installment, DRESS HER IN INDIGO, McGee set out to recover, it could best be said, a reputation: no cash value, no profit, just a favor for a friend and the right thing to do. In THE LONG LAVENDER LOOK there's no "mission" at all: a late-night accident pulls McGee and his pal Meyer unwillingly into the dark underbelly of a central FL town: one of MacDonald's favorite topics--he's clearly a frustrated sociologist. And as of this installment in the series it's becoming very clear that JDM is much more interested in social commentary, interpersonal drama, reflections on personality and philosophy, and character development than he is in the "mystery." (That being said, he constructs mystery stories that are extremely intellectually complicated by today's "thriller" standards, and feature fairly large casts of characters. While written 50 years earlier, a Travis McGee story is much more like THE WIRE in subject matter and complexity than anything from James Patterson or Michael Connelly.)
But what I like best about the JDM stories is what, I gather, most readers today like least: the author's voice and tone, and the writing style.
Here's an example:
"The sun was down and the porch faced the western sky, faced a band of red so intense it looked as if all the far cities of the world were burning. It will probably look much like that when they do burn."
Maybe it's just me, but that's pretty good poetry for a throw-away crime story.
Elsewhere in the novel JDM offers a wonderful digression on memory and how the mind works. It doesn't advance the plot, but it makes for great reading--for me, at least.
"There had been a lot of waiting-time in my life. Sometimes it was cat-time, watching the mouse hole for all the endless dreary hours. Sometimes it had been mouse-time, waiting all the day through for the darkness and the time for running.
"So you learn the special resources of both memory and imagination. You let the mind run through the old valleys, the back hills, and pastures of your long-ago years. You take an object. Roller skate. The kind from way back, that fastened to the shoes instead of coming with shoes attached. Look and feel and design of the skate key. With old worn shoes you turn the key too much and you start to buckle the sole of the shoe. Spin one wheel and listen to the ball-bearinged whir, and feel the gritty texture of the metal abraded by the sidewalks. Remember how slow and strange and awkward it felt to walk again, after all the long Saturday on skates, after going way to the other end of town. Remember the soreness where the strap bit into the top of your ankle. When it got too sore, you could stop and undo the strap and run it through the top laces of your shoe. Thick dark scab on the abraded knee. The sick-making smack of skull against sidewalk. Something about the other end of the skate key… Of course! A hex wrench orifice that fit the out on the bottom of the skate so you could expand it or contract it to fit the shoe. If you didn’t tighten it enough, or if it worked loose, then the skate would stealthily lengthen, the clamps no longer fitting the edge of the shoe sole, and at some startling moment the next thrust would spin the skate around, and you either took a very nasty spill, or ended up coasting on the good skate, holding the other foot with dangling skate up in the air until you came to a place to sit down and get the key out and tighten everything again. Roller skate or sand box or apple tree or cellar door. Playground swing or lumberyard or blackboard or kite string. Because that was when all the input was vivid. All of it is still there. So you find a little door back there, and like Alice, you walk through it into the magic country, where each bright flash of memory illuminates yet another."
I admit I'm a fan of literary fiction as well as crime fiction--and don't have much time for the tired old high-low arguments, especially when you can clearly have your cake and eat it too.
I'm now more than halfway through the series, and I'm going to start savoring each of them even more, as I suspect the best is yet to come. There are crime writers who'll truly live forever (Hammett, Chandler, maybe Westlake), and I only hope John D. MacDonald isn't forgotten too soon.
The series, with Trav as the philosophical bare-knuckle hero, is set up according to the normal tropes of the PI genre, except instead of being a PI McGee is a "salvage expert"--operating without a license, he helps people "recover lost property" and, if he's successful, takes 50% of the profit. I felt that the first in the series, THE DEEP BLUE GOOD-BYE, was one of the best "hard-boiled" novels I've ever read, especially in the (loosely) PI genre. Since then, I've enjoyed them all, though some (DARKER THAN AMBER) have been much better than others (NIGHTMARE IN PINK). (I am also, I should note, not a huge fan of the PI genre, if that means anything.)
My pal Barney has promised me that the series transforms pretty significantly "from standard Gold Medal PI-type stuff" to "something very different" around (I think he said) #17, THE EMPTY COPPER SEA. However, I can already see changes afoot. In the last installment, DRESS HER IN INDIGO, McGee set out to recover, it could best be said, a reputation: no cash value, no profit, just a favor for a friend and the right thing to do. In THE LONG LAVENDER LOOK there's no "mission" at all: a late-night accident pulls McGee and his pal Meyer unwillingly into the dark underbelly of a central FL town: one of MacDonald's favorite topics--he's clearly a frustrated sociologist. And as of this installment in the series it's becoming very clear that JDM is much more interested in social commentary, interpersonal drama, reflections on personality and philosophy, and character development than he is in the "mystery." (That being said, he constructs mystery stories that are extremely intellectually complicated by today's "thriller" standards, and feature fairly large casts of characters. While written 50 years earlier, a Travis McGee story is much more like THE WIRE in subject matter and complexity than anything from James Patterson or Michael Connelly.)
But what I like best about the JDM stories is what, I gather, most readers today like least: the author's voice and tone, and the writing style.
Here's an example:
"The sun was down and the porch faced the western sky, faced a band of red so intense it looked as if all the far cities of the world were burning. It will probably look much like that when they do burn."
Maybe it's just me, but that's pretty good poetry for a throw-away crime story.
Elsewhere in the novel JDM offers a wonderful digression on memory and how the mind works. It doesn't advance the plot, but it makes for great reading--for me, at least.
"There had been a lot of waiting-time in my life. Sometimes it was cat-time, watching the mouse hole for all the endless dreary hours. Sometimes it had been mouse-time, waiting all the day through for the darkness and the time for running.
"So you learn the special resources of both memory and imagination. You let the mind run through the old valleys, the back hills, and pastures of your long-ago years. You take an object. Roller skate. The kind from way back, that fastened to the shoes instead of coming with shoes attached. Look and feel and design of the skate key. With old worn shoes you turn the key too much and you start to buckle the sole of the shoe. Spin one wheel and listen to the ball-bearinged whir, and feel the gritty texture of the metal abraded by the sidewalks. Remember how slow and strange and awkward it felt to walk again, after all the long Saturday on skates, after going way to the other end of town. Remember the soreness where the strap bit into the top of your ankle. When it got too sore, you could stop and undo the strap and run it through the top laces of your shoe. Thick dark scab on the abraded knee. The sick-making smack of skull against sidewalk. Something about the other end of the skate key… Of course! A hex wrench orifice that fit the out on the bottom of the skate so you could expand it or contract it to fit the shoe. If you didn’t tighten it enough, or if it worked loose, then the skate would stealthily lengthen, the clamps no longer fitting the edge of the shoe sole, and at some startling moment the next thrust would spin the skate around, and you either took a very nasty spill, or ended up coasting on the good skate, holding the other foot with dangling skate up in the air until you came to a place to sit down and get the key out and tighten everything again. Roller skate or sand box or apple tree or cellar door. Playground swing or lumberyard or blackboard or kite string. Because that was when all the input was vivid. All of it is still there. So you find a little door back there, and like Alice, you walk through it into the magic country, where each bright flash of memory illuminates yet another."
I admit I'm a fan of literary fiction as well as crime fiction--and don't have much time for the tired old high-low arguments, especially when you can clearly have your cake and eat it too.
I'm now more than halfway through the series, and I'm going to start savoring each of them even more, as I suspect the best is yet to come. There are crime writers who'll truly live forever (Hammett, Chandler, maybe Westlake), and I only hope John D. MacDonald isn't forgotten too soon.
June 22, 2016
If you read a lot of Ross MacDonald, and also read the reviews of Ross MacDonald here on Goodreads, then the name of John D. MacDonald comes up a lot. An awful lot. They’re two writers who find themselves jammed together not because they were both crime writers of the same generation, but simply because they had the same last name (It’d be interesting to know what John D. thought about that though, as he was the only one of the two who genuinely did have the last name MacDonald.) But – and okay, I’m only going by one example of John D’s work here – I think there are as many differences as similarities.
Both central protagonists are tough guys, sure, but Travis McGee strikes me as lot wilier than Archer, and is definitely without the vein of sadness which runs six inches wide through Archer’s soul. And that’s where the split between them really is: there’s not the melancholia you get in an Archer novel, or the disappointment that the past has turned into this future. It’s a happier viewpoint, one that for all the bad stuff that happens in it is fundamentally optimistic.
It is blind and stupid luck that sees Travis McGee and his friend Meyer swerving late at night on a deserted Florida road to avoid a nearly naked woman who runs into their path. The car is nearly written off, but that’s far from the worst of it. Before long there’s somebody taking shots at them and then both have been arrested for the murder of a man neither has ever heard of. Let out on a short leash, McGee can’t leave town before he works out just what the hell is going on.
There seems to be a casual pace to Florida based crime fiction that hitherto has irritated me (I could never get on with Carl Hiaasen, for instance), but even though that easy going rhythm is there – and yes, initially it did annoy me – it wasn’t long before I was sucked in to find what is a gripping, opaque crime thriller. A mystery which will keep you guessing and keep you tense, even as it puts its arm around you and treats you like an old friend.
Actually, can a book be classed as ‘friendly’? Is that an appropriate term for a book? Maybe, maybe not – but certainly for all the hardness and toughness in this book, this is a hard and tough book which is most welcoming.
Both central protagonists are tough guys, sure, but Travis McGee strikes me as lot wilier than Archer, and is definitely without the vein of sadness which runs six inches wide through Archer’s soul. And that’s where the split between them really is: there’s not the melancholia you get in an Archer novel, or the disappointment that the past has turned into this future. It’s a happier viewpoint, one that for all the bad stuff that happens in it is fundamentally optimistic.
It is blind and stupid luck that sees Travis McGee and his friend Meyer swerving late at night on a deserted Florida road to avoid a nearly naked woman who runs into their path. The car is nearly written off, but that’s far from the worst of it. Before long there’s somebody taking shots at them and then both have been arrested for the murder of a man neither has ever heard of. Let out on a short leash, McGee can’t leave town before he works out just what the hell is going on.
There seems to be a casual pace to Florida based crime fiction that hitherto has irritated me (I could never get on with Carl Hiaasen, for instance), but even though that easy going rhythm is there – and yes, initially it did annoy me – it wasn’t long before I was sucked in to find what is a gripping, opaque crime thriller. A mystery which will keep you guessing and keep you tense, even as it puts its arm around you and treats you like an old friend.
Actually, can a book be classed as ‘friendly’? Is that an appropriate term for a book? Maybe, maybe not – but certainly for all the hardness and toughness in this book, this is a hard and tough book which is most welcoming.
June 12, 2020
This book is partly appealing to me because it is now so outdated. MacDonald uses many outdated expressions and words like pocketbook, macadam, driving someone floppy, etc. Also, the references to computers often talk about specific models of IBMswhich were all the rage for very short periods of time. The times have passed when having cocktails close to 5 pm were a classy thing and everyone smokes, some people even have a favorite brand that they smoke. The best dinner they can think of involves a huge steak and it is a shrewd deal if one can get a really good one meal for under $20. Gambling is a big deal and sex is everywhere. A book obviously written in the 1970s. Kind of like watching an old movie to see the cars and clothing styles. Travis McGee is a smooth operator who can admit to the pleasures of the flesh but still prefers his women to be a little smarter than the average.
If you can thank God than some of these things have gone by the wayside and just take this for the simple murder mystery it is, it is entertaining.
If you can thank God than some of these things have gone by the wayside and just take this for the simple murder mystery it is, it is entertaining.
February 12, 2009
Time was, I was a big fan of John D. MacDonald (he was still alive then). I believe I read all of the Travis McGee books, of which this is one. I also read Condominium, one of his attempts at literary fiction, and predictably it was a disappointment. The power of the McGee books is in the genre and in the attitude. Dirty dealings and benign cynicism.
Trav is a very 'Sixties hero, with parallels to James Bond. Like Bond, McGee is a garbage-collector of the vile detritus left behind by the world's evil geniuses (and quite a few just plain idiotic criminals reminiscent of Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino stories). Trav is also both a lover and an exploiter of beautiful women--some smart, some dumb, all in some kind of trouble. And, as in the Bond stories, the ones he loves too much end up dead, usually horribly so, at the hands of the elusive monster-du-jour. Revenge then adds to Trav's justification for giving back as bad as his girlie got, or worse.
As an education in the underside of Florida real-estate schemes and political corruption, MacDonald's books are delightful and unexpected discoveries. You also get a strong dose of macroeconomic theory anytime McGee engages his neighbor Meyer Meyer in intellectual banter, whom we find sitting next to him in the speeding old Rolls pickup truck in the opening pages of Lavender.
But what strikes me as I pick up this book again is the depth of the cruelty MacDonald conjures. It's really ugly, voyeuristic, more shocking than the scummiest story in today's Enquirer. Leonard dishes out such material with a sigh, Tarantino with a chortle. I'm not sure where MacDonald stands, but suffice it to say his opinion of human nature is not too high.
Gerald.
Boychik Lit
Trav is a very 'Sixties hero, with parallels to James Bond. Like Bond, McGee is a garbage-collector of the vile detritus left behind by the world's evil geniuses (and quite a few just plain idiotic criminals reminiscent of Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino stories). Trav is also both a lover and an exploiter of beautiful women--some smart, some dumb, all in some kind of trouble. And, as in the Bond stories, the ones he loves too much end up dead, usually horribly so, at the hands of the elusive monster-du-jour. Revenge then adds to Trav's justification for giving back as bad as his girlie got, or worse.
As an education in the underside of Florida real-estate schemes and political corruption, MacDonald's books are delightful and unexpected discoveries. You also get a strong dose of macroeconomic theory anytime McGee engages his neighbor Meyer Meyer in intellectual banter, whom we find sitting next to him in the speeding old Rolls pickup truck in the opening pages of Lavender.
But what strikes me as I pick up this book again is the depth of the cruelty MacDonald conjures. It's really ugly, voyeuristic, more shocking than the scummiest story in today's Enquirer. Leonard dishes out such material with a sigh, Tarantino with a chortle. I'm not sure where MacDonald stands, but suffice it to say his opinion of human nature is not too high.
Gerald.
Boychik Lit
May 10, 2019
Ah, Trav. I like you more and more the more and more depressed and disillusioned you become. Also, women who want to have a drink with you should reconsider, because in sixty pages they're going to wind up trussed up somewhere like a Christmas goose, only naked and extremely dead. WOMEN, DO NOT DATE TRAVIS MCGEE, anyway not casually. (If you're invited to the Busted Flush for a three-month in Grand Cayman you're going to be fine, but apparently you gain a lot of weight and may get skin cancer later.)
May 25, 2020
The Long Lavender Look is a very fine entry in the Travis McGee series. It deviates a bit from the norm as Travis and Meyer become the focus of a case, rather than the usual friend or acquaintance, as they get wrapped up in a string of murders tied to an armored car heist. It was also a bit raunchier than most, in part since the story involves a prostitution ring.
Yet all the pieces that make a great McGee story are here in spades, not least of which is MacDonald's evocative prose and stinging psychological teardowns on what makes some of the characters, and sometimes society at large, tick - their failings, self delusions and innermost fears and motivations. Also a deliciously devious plot involving a large cast of shady and questionable characters, and quite a few twists and turns. Particularly memorable is Lilo Ferris, an unsavory femme fatale with a raw, feral sexuality, animal cunning and brute strength that prove almost too much for McGee to handle.
Yet all the pieces that make a great McGee story are here in spades, not least of which is MacDonald's evocative prose and stinging psychological teardowns on what makes some of the characters, and sometimes society at large, tick - their failings, self delusions and innermost fears and motivations. Also a deliciously devious plot involving a large cast of shady and questionable characters, and quite a few twists and turns. Particularly memorable is Lilo Ferris, an unsavory femme fatale with a raw, feral sexuality, animal cunning and brute strength that prove almost too much for McGee to handle.
August 2, 2023
Of all the things in my life for which I am grateful, up near the top is the fact I can reread Travis McGee books after years have passed and typically find I remember almost nothing. Thus, it is a second time brand new adventure, and this book is one of the very best. I know MacDonald isn’t for everyone, 50 and 60 year old crime books, but to me his spare, no frills, creatively descriptive writing is as good as it gets. I took a number of screenshot pictures, including:
“The scales don’t weigh the way they should. One little thing on one side weighs…more than everything on the other side.”
“Back over the same roads, riding in the same cage I had ridden with Meyer, in the same faint stink of Illness and despair.”
“And I let myself down into that dark turbulence…Betsy playing her lavender game with stomach turning grimace, and a flat steel handle sticking straight out, and the foam caked into the corner of the dead mouth of the mad young girl.”
“The scales don’t weigh the way they should. One little thing on one side weighs…more than everything on the other side.”
“Back over the same roads, riding in the same cage I had ridden with Meyer, in the same faint stink of Illness and despair.”
“And I let myself down into that dark turbulence…Betsy playing her lavender game with stomach turning grimace, and a flat steel handle sticking straight out, and the foam caked into the corner of the dead mouth of the mad young girl.”
April 14, 2021
Even a not so great Travis McGee novel is still entertaining and interesting. This wasn't my favorite, mainly because McGee wasn't in the drivers seat for a large portion of the novel and instead the plot was driven forward by secondary characters. This isn't the first time this has been done in the series, but it might be the least entertaining way it's been done. In this one McGee gets roped into a local murder investigation by being in the wrong place at the wrong time after attending a wedding with his ever present partner in crime, Meyer. I recently saw the best description of the McGee series and MacDonald's writing in it that I've come across: McGee is a true philosopher detective, witty and clever, the sort of character you can't help but enjoy reading about. As for MacDonald, when he's at his best he's very entertaining and covers all sorts of relevant side topics that still ring true today. When he's not at the top of his game, his novels read like had spy thrillers, almost James Bond-esque, which in it self is still entertaining. I love the snapshot in this these novels create, an archetypal 60's man using the language and opinions of the time period. It's like getting lost in a very entertaining past with a adventurous tour guide that's always in the thick of things.
June 15, 2020
Travis McGee is an Archetype Come Alive
I like the first peon narrative that gives a glimpse of McGee’s character by his interpretation of events.
It is a good mystery, too. Not to easy to solve but not too hard, either.
There is a story arc of McGee’s life binding the books together, but this one is perfectly readable without reading the previous ones.
I like the first peon narrative that gives a glimpse of McGee’s character by his interpretation of events.
It is a good mystery, too. Not to easy to solve but not too hard, either.
There is a story arc of McGee’s life binding the books together, but this one is perfectly readable without reading the previous ones.
April 23, 2022
There's some perverse fascination I think I have not with John D. MacDonald, but with the idea that I should be a bigger fan of John D. MacDonald than I am. This is a notion that leads me to keep reading his books in a vague quest to find some dim spark that might finally make me a fan, and which led me to actually buying two Travis McGee books online to have shipped to me: this one and another I'll probably read at some point if not to only have an actual return on my purchase.
I know he's popular and literarily acclaimed for a reason. As far as I can tell, the reason is this: he's a good writer. His prose is fantastic and I must give him credit for legitimately writing intelligent thrillers. It would be a true sin if these books were boring and brainless -- as it stands, I only find the Travis McGee books boring and very well written.
Yes, this book was also very boring to me. I read it with only casual interest because it just never really engaged me, I didn't really care about anything that was happening, and I probably would not even have read it in the time that I did if I hadn't happened to bring it while waiting for a hospital appointment -- during which time I was forced by circumstance to burn through about half the page count (thank God, because this truly did feel like a chore to pick up at some points).
The two books in the series I've liked (The Deep Blue Good-by and A Purple Place For Dying) were much pulpier, but at least that gave them a better degree of directness and pace. The two I've disliked (this and Darker Than Amber) seem to just go on forever with meagre plots that at the same time somehow seem massively bloated due to MacDonald's constant digressions and endless page counts devoted to barely anything happening at all.
As I said before, perhaps this is what contributes to these books being considered "intelligent thrillers". Maybe they are. But I'm just not finding them interesting. But there is also slightly less overt misogyny in this one, so... there's that too.
I know he's popular and literarily acclaimed for a reason. As far as I can tell, the reason is this: he's a good writer. His prose is fantastic and I must give him credit for legitimately writing intelligent thrillers. It would be a true sin if these books were boring and brainless -- as it stands, I only find the Travis McGee books boring and very well written.
Yes, this book was also very boring to me. I read it with only casual interest because it just never really engaged me, I didn't really care about anything that was happening, and I probably would not even have read it in the time that I did if I hadn't happened to bring it while waiting for a hospital appointment -- during which time I was forced by circumstance to burn through about half the page count (thank God, because this truly did feel like a chore to pick up at some points).
The two books in the series I've liked (The Deep Blue Good-by and A Purple Place For Dying) were much pulpier, but at least that gave them a better degree of directness and pace. The two I've disliked (this and Darker Than Amber) seem to just go on forever with meagre plots that at the same time somehow seem massively bloated due to MacDonald's constant digressions and endless page counts devoted to barely anything happening at all.
As I said before, perhaps this is what contributes to these books being considered "intelligent thrillers". Maybe they are. But I'm just not finding them interesting. But there is also slightly less overt misogyny in this one, so... there's that too.
November 17, 2016
Less social commentary in this one but also less slightly offensive remarks about women.
June 7, 2015
1 jun 15
#43 from macdonald for me, travis mcgee #12...though i think this is the 9th or 10th mcgee story for me. trying to read them sequentially but i just finished Pale Gray For Guilt and the next in line is not available yet. 'til then, this.
onward & upward.
3 jun 15
finished. good story. mcgee isn't trying to recover money for another in this one, although there is a vast sum of money involved, the armored car robbery loot. and this is another...i think the last i read was the same way...in that the "bad man" is not on stage for much. there are a number of stories at play, macdonald had mcgee use the analogy of the planet pluto and how that planet was discovered...things acting like something else was there, though unknown...'til it was known. same here. death comes easy to so many in these mcgee stories. there are a multitude of characters whose motivations and choices are influenced by factors known and unknown. so. good read.
story begins
last april. ten o'clock at night. hustling south on florida 12 through the eastern section of cypress county, about twenty miles from the intersection of 112 and the tamiami trail.
so maybe i was pushing old miss agnes along a little too fast. narrow macadam. stars above, and some wisps of ground mist below. but not much of it, and not often.
time place scene setting
* story opens late april, (April 23/24) ten o'clock at night florida highway 112, eastern section of cypress county, 20 miles from the intersection of 112 and the tamiami trail
* miss agnes, travis's 30s model rolls royce, converted to a truck by another, now owned by travis, called miss agenes after a teacher he had as a child
* travis's friend's fish camp on lake passkokee
* the intersection of 112 and the tamiami trail, big service station and garage
* cypress county jailhouse, cell #12 for travis, meyer in another
* cypress city
* white ibis motor inn...where travis stays, unit #114...meyer exits to the hospital
* mrs. teffer's live oak lode and dining room, where all eat
* johnny's main street service, where miss agnes is brought
* a red plastic national franchise selling the best sandwiches anytime anywhere
* the cypress call and journal (newspaper) offices, a cement block building on princeton street, cypress city
* frank baither's residence on state road 72
* cora arnstead's residence, 3880 cattleman's road, where lew, her son, also stays
* the adventurer, a bar
* sinkhole west on county line road
* woodgate shopping center
* betsy kapp's place on seminole street
* emergecny room at city memorial hospital, cypress city, florida
* an all-night drive-in
* kramer home building supply headquarters, mile and a half out of town on airport road
* a grove behind bernie's
* cypress county gov't offices...land maps, property, so forth so on, clerk's office
* a shack on property owned now by lew arnstead
characters major
* travis mcgee, our hero, 1st-person narrator
* meyer, his friend, neighbor, economist
* a girl who runs in front of travis's car, "lilo", lillian hatch, she was the first baby of wanda and johnny hatch, second was ronnie, and then there was one that died
* cypress county sheriff norman "norm" l. hyzer
* frank baither...killed...story opens, recently released from raiford state prison
* deputy lewis b. "lew" arnstead, our villian, beats meyer in jail, the number one stud in cypress county
* leonard "lennie" sibelius, miami attorney travis calls for help
minor characters, w/name, no name, setting scene characters
* an old friend of travis, jimmy ames
* betsy, his eldest daughter, to whose wedding travis and meyer attended. they are returning to lauderdale
* gnomes, meyer's dream
* scientists
* driver of a sedan, ohio license
* a burly figure at the wheel
* orville...hutch...two names the burly figure uses
* al storey, manager of the big service station
* terrance "terry" moon, worker at al's service station
* a sheriff's deputy...who takes the accident report, officer "beef" nagle
* henry, another work at al's service station
* hummer, a customer of al's
* a sheriff deputy driving sheriff hyzer
* johnny's main street service...wrecker that pulls miss agnes from 10' of swamp water side of the road
* a fat elderly deputy, billy cable
* a very large deputy sat on another straight chair
* possibly king sturnevan, who witnesses interrogation of travis by hyzer, and he is also a former boxer/fighter known to travis as such. he is orginally from nutley, new jersey
* pritchard monitoring tape (interrogation)
* county medical examiner
* "priskie" priskitt, another deputy...this one in charge of the cells/prisoners
* a great big cuban boy, tigre...king strunevan fought, travis saw
* nat's book...that king wants to look in, see the last name of that cuban kid he fought
* the county commission
* a quiet little man...travis was on stakeout with him
* the people they were covering
* the operator...for a person-to-person collect call
* annie carmichael, leonard sibelius's secretary
* guests...of leonard sibelius on the witchcraft, his boat
* a pair of blonde twins slathering oil on each other, among them
* wes...leonard will have wes take the party out while he makes some calls
* "charlie"...imaginary character of mcgee's mind
* a trusty who had been sent to get travis's meal in jail
* a woman from michigan who hyzer married...they both were teachers in rochester, new york
* hyzer's mother
* hyzer's infant baby daughter. hyzer's wife and daugther were both killed in a car pedestrian accident
* a couple of miami kids in a stolen car
* pistol-shipped the clerk
* a cop cruiser who gave chase
* three clowns who had truck duty...to do with the past, an armored car robbery that provides background to the story
* the people in the money room...at the racetrack
* the police had turned up a few people who had seen
* a man in the kitchen and a girl working the counter...where the three clowns were slipped something
* they'd have a second girl car-hopping
* a girl and three men had hit the drive-in a half hour before the money-truck people walked in
* she thought there might be a fourth man on watch
* houseguest...female...frank baither
* circuit court judge sentenced frank baither to five years for armed robbery...frank's doing, so he'd be 'safe' from whom-so-ever
* an uncle for whom frank worked as a kid, concrete, developed muscles
* a few latin americans there...frank cultivated, learned spanish
* a woman in her own bed (story from meyer...fate)
* hard-case types the miami herald would send
* the other woman (a case handled by leonard)
* heir to a pulp mill & timberlands fortune
* who shot and killed his insomniac wife
* a redheaded boy in greasy khakis (airport)
* a woman at the desk with instant, trained, formal politeness
* an old man sat in the small office, reading a true-crime magazine (at johnny's main street service), probably john hatch
* a large young man about nineeen (same place), ron hatch...and he is related to the girl who dashed in front of travis's car on the dark road
* his father is johnny hatch, who owns johnny's main street service, and john/johnny hatch is also the father of lillian "lilo" hatch, the girl who ran in front of travis's car...he had married wanda, a trashy girl from miami, and after divorcing her, she married henry perris ans johnny married again, couple more babies
* a drab, muttering woman (who serves the best sandwiches anywhere)
* foster goss, managing editor of the cypress call & journal
* a couple of hefty women pecking vintage typewriters
* a crickety octogenarian on the copy desk
* a couple of slack young men murmuring into phones
* a mini-girl got up
* county judge stan bowley
* foster goss's 17-year-old daugther married to a supermarket bag boy
* foster goss's 12-year-old spastic son
* a very very british lady on lennie's staff
* three arnsteads in phone book, j.a., and henry t. and cora
* cora arnstead, lew arnstead's mother
* buttercup, cora's big dog
* lew arnstead was going with the willoughbee girl, clara willoughbee
* jason was cora's first, henry her second, and then 16 long years later she had lew
* jason is 43 now, married 24 years, their first is a girl married at 16, great-grandson of cora, near six years old
* a lot of cheap, bright-smelling, loud-voice women...lew
* trash like them perrises, the wife is bedridden, the father was seen porking some girl in the next room
* the baby...mentioned in a note in lew arnstead's secret stash
* frannie, name mentioned in another note
* lilo's (or lillian) mother and father
* roddy barramore
* rhoda...name used in the perris story by betsy
* betsy kapp...writer of a note found by travis in lew arnstead's secret stash. divorced, works hostess in the dining room live oak lodge
* various photos, polaroids, of bare-naked women in lew's stash...thirteen different females, 18-32
* wanda, woman john hatch married, turned out to be trashy
* henry perris, a good mechanic who worked for johnny hatch when he wasn't porking wanda, johnny's trashy wife. after johnny gave wanda the boot, henry married her
* a fellow johnny hatch brought in to get the goods on wanda/henry
* some extraordinarily cruel men in the primitive areas of india
* purchase children
* people at the adventurer bar, the obligatory birdcage girl dancing, high school kids, ranch hands, packing-house workers, single swingers, married couples, bank clerks and secretaries and young realtors, carpenters and plumber, electricians and hard-wall plasterers, dentists, soldiers sailors, hospital technicians nurses bag boys store clerks and a handful of customary predators, middle-aged men in youthful clothing
* two quiet men...picked the right one (disturbance at bar)
* family celebration (lodge dining room), middle-aged males, a fresh-faced girl and her blushing husband-to-be, two quiet couples, three burly businessmen
* betsy kapp is from winter haven, here in cypress city when she was 12 to stay with an aunt
* betsy married a boy, killed in a terrible automobile accident, donny, donny's parents
* gregg kapp, betsy married after this, divorced now
* frank the bartender, at the lodge dining room where betsy kapp works tables and hostess
* helen, another waitress works with betsy kapp
* people sat in their dimly lighted rooms, hosts and hostesses (tv)
* raoul, betsy kapp's cat
* a gentleman friend of betsy kapp
* forney baither, one rotten baither boy in junior high with betsy kapp...killed in vietnam years ago
* a talented lady...defined poetry as a make-believe garden containing a real toad
* doctor grinner...gave betsy kapp a prescription
* mr. kaufman down the street (neighbor ob betsy kapp)
* a fat lady in red pants knelt three front yards away, troweling in her weeds
* some fat children were wallowing and whooping in the pool
* a dispatcher
* a crank caller, said he lives on haydon street
* homer...doing a new brochure for the chamber of commerce
* two gentle maidens about the john meynard keyes with meyer
* a very somber young man in orange garments (golf on tv)
* the silverstaff boy from up the road
* a pair of strangers behind the high desk (jailhouse)
* communications clerk
* some bloody, broken moaning teenagers
* billy cable's wife and three children
* big table of teenagers, whispering, haw-hawing at delicious private nonsense
* a few night people spaced along
* the waitress was a plump, pretty girl, dori, part of deputy lew arnstead's stable of women
* dori's husband, in service at one time, fred
* a variety of men lew arranges to have paid sex with dori severiss, others
* carolyn...dori's immediate boss, supervisor
* judge o'harran...one of dori's dates
* dori's wonderful crazy girlfriend, who signed on without blackmail or coercion
* mrs garnor...where dori initially worked, skimmed money
* five clerks...who fell under suspicion at garnor's boutique at woodsgate shopping center
* the credit people
* hired captain and three sort of vice-president-type people...more dates with dori and others
* donna lee...one of 14 polaroids that dori identifies for travis...another woman in lew's stable
* brenda dennis, another, dennison? denderson?
* miss geraldine kimmy...teaches third grade, another, got in a bind by groping some little kid
* linda featherman...another...died in vehicle accident
* jeannie dahl, #10, married and divorced, lives with mother, little kid, davie, lousy ex
* #11 was unknown, 12 was somebody she'd seen around town
* a spook...one of dori's dates
* immigration officer in miami...girls...kid sister...old man from peru
* dale featherman...rich daddy of linda featherman
* four generations of florida mone, and senators from washington and banker fro new york
* three brothers and sisters of linda featherman
* old men were browsing through the hand tools
* two middle-aged women and one young one behind the waist-high fence
* mr frandel...at the home building supply
* miguel...a past friend of travis...deceased, taught him how to throw a knife
* no australian among the eight men and three women spectators
* hullinger, reiter, rench, dowd, albritton, eggert, alderman, jenkins, hyatt, mccroan, featherman...names in the clerk's registry of property
* the spectacled girl
* stane, murrity, floyd, garrison, perris...names on mailboxes
* a successful film actress...exudes a degree of psychic musk
* a pretty lady who came aboard the busted flush with her ocelot
* two men with frank, biloxi, took a casino...two others. hutchason and orville
* nulia...takes care of henry perris's home, wife, bedridden, black woman
* johnny's attorney
* two bleached boys in bucket seats, three limber, noisy, bikinied young girls...tommy, bunny lee, norma jean a few of their names...old dolores...someone they know
* red...a sheriff's office employee
* cheery gray lady...nurse, hospital
* doctor
* heidi geis trumbill...at the end...at the busted flush, a woman from travis's past
real people, famous, fictionally famous, so forth so on
* arnold palmer
* floyd patterson
* alice (in wonderland)
* sherman (civil war)
* custer
* beatles
* jesus christ
* sibelius, belli, foreman, bailey...both fictional story character and real people, not sure about belli and foreman, hired gladiators
* lord god
* jesus q. christ
* doris day
* alexander botts, scattergood baines, tugboat annie
* mr phelps (mission impossible, tv show?), half brother of kataynzia dictator)
* barney, paris...tv characters i think barney fife? paris? who is spock only paris on mission impossible
* cinnamon...another?
* chief ironsides...television character
* marshall dillon (gunsmoke tv show)
* dan'l boone
* andy (probably means andy griffith, sheriff, mayberry r.f.d.)
* tarzan, sir galahad, robin hood, ben casey, cap'n ahab, the shadow, peter rabbit
* mr bonfa (music)
* maria toledo (portuguese singer?)
* alfred hitchcock
* myrna loy...william powell
* liz taylor
* burroughs, as in accounting machine
* montovani...piped music
* judas...as in goat
* mona lisa
#43 from macdonald for me, travis mcgee #12...though i think this is the 9th or 10th mcgee story for me. trying to read them sequentially but i just finished Pale Gray For Guilt and the next in line is not available yet. 'til then, this.
onward & upward.
3 jun 15
finished. good story. mcgee isn't trying to recover money for another in this one, although there is a vast sum of money involved, the armored car robbery loot. and this is another...i think the last i read was the same way...in that the "bad man" is not on stage for much. there are a number of stories at play, macdonald had mcgee use the analogy of the planet pluto and how that planet was discovered...things acting like something else was there, though unknown...'til it was known. same here. death comes easy to so many in these mcgee stories. there are a multitude of characters whose motivations and choices are influenced by factors known and unknown. so. good read.
story begins
last april. ten o'clock at night. hustling south on florida 12 through the eastern section of cypress county, about twenty miles from the intersection of 112 and the tamiami trail.
so maybe i was pushing old miss agnes along a little too fast. narrow macadam. stars above, and some wisps of ground mist below. but not much of it, and not often.
time place scene setting
* story opens late april, (April 23/24) ten o'clock at night florida highway 112, eastern section of cypress county, 20 miles from the intersection of 112 and the tamiami trail
* miss agnes, travis's 30s model rolls royce, converted to a truck by another, now owned by travis, called miss agenes after a teacher he had as a child
* travis's friend's fish camp on lake passkokee
* the intersection of 112 and the tamiami trail, big service station and garage
* cypress county jailhouse, cell #12 for travis, meyer in another
* cypress city
* white ibis motor inn...where travis stays, unit #114...meyer exits to the hospital
* mrs. teffer's live oak lode and dining room, where all eat
* johnny's main street service, where miss agnes is brought
* a red plastic national franchise selling the best sandwiches anytime anywhere
* the cypress call and journal (newspaper) offices, a cement block building on princeton street, cypress city
* frank baither's residence on state road 72
* cora arnstead's residence, 3880 cattleman's road, where lew, her son, also stays
* the adventurer, a bar
* sinkhole west on county line road
* woodgate shopping center
* betsy kapp's place on seminole street
* emergecny room at city memorial hospital, cypress city, florida
* an all-night drive-in
* kramer home building supply headquarters, mile and a half out of town on airport road
* a grove behind bernie's
* cypress county gov't offices...land maps, property, so forth so on, clerk's office
* a shack on property owned now by lew arnstead
characters major
* travis mcgee, our hero, 1st-person narrator
* meyer, his friend, neighbor, economist
* a girl who runs in front of travis's car, "lilo", lillian hatch, she was the first baby of wanda and johnny hatch, second was ronnie, and then there was one that died
* cypress county sheriff norman "norm" l. hyzer
* frank baither...killed...story opens, recently released from raiford state prison
* deputy lewis b. "lew" arnstead, our villian, beats meyer in jail, the number one stud in cypress county
* leonard "lennie" sibelius, miami attorney travis calls for help
minor characters, w/name, no name, setting scene characters
* an old friend of travis, jimmy ames
* betsy, his eldest daughter, to whose wedding travis and meyer attended. they are returning to lauderdale
* gnomes, meyer's dream
* scientists
* driver of a sedan, ohio license
* a burly figure at the wheel
* orville...hutch...two names the burly figure uses
* al storey, manager of the big service station
* terrance "terry" moon, worker at al's service station
* a sheriff's deputy...who takes the accident report, officer "beef" nagle
* henry, another work at al's service station
* hummer, a customer of al's
* a sheriff deputy driving sheriff hyzer
* johnny's main street service...wrecker that pulls miss agnes from 10' of swamp water side of the road
* a fat elderly deputy, billy cable
* a very large deputy sat on another straight chair
* possibly king sturnevan, who witnesses interrogation of travis by hyzer, and he is also a former boxer/fighter known to travis as such. he is orginally from nutley, new jersey
* pritchard monitoring tape (interrogation)
* county medical examiner
* "priskie" priskitt, another deputy...this one in charge of the cells/prisoners
* a great big cuban boy, tigre...king strunevan fought, travis saw
* nat's book...that king wants to look in, see the last name of that cuban kid he fought
* the county commission
* a quiet little man...travis was on stakeout with him
* the people they were covering
* the operator...for a person-to-person collect call
* annie carmichael, leonard sibelius's secretary
* guests...of leonard sibelius on the witchcraft, his boat
* a pair of blonde twins slathering oil on each other, among them
* wes...leonard will have wes take the party out while he makes some calls
* "charlie"...imaginary character of mcgee's mind
* a trusty who had been sent to get travis's meal in jail
* a woman from michigan who hyzer married...they both were teachers in rochester, new york
* hyzer's mother
* hyzer's infant baby daughter. hyzer's wife and daugther were both killed in a car pedestrian accident
* a couple of miami kids in a stolen car
* pistol-shipped the clerk
* a cop cruiser who gave chase
* three clowns who had truck duty...to do with the past, an armored car robbery that provides background to the story
* the people in the money room...at the racetrack
* the police had turned up a few people who had seen
* a man in the kitchen and a girl working the counter...where the three clowns were slipped something
* they'd have a second girl car-hopping
* a girl and three men had hit the drive-in a half hour before the money-truck people walked in
* she thought there might be a fourth man on watch
* houseguest...female...frank baither
* circuit court judge sentenced frank baither to five years for armed robbery...frank's doing, so he'd be 'safe' from whom-so-ever
* an uncle for whom frank worked as a kid, concrete, developed muscles
* a few latin americans there...frank cultivated, learned spanish
* a woman in her own bed (story from meyer...fate)
* hard-case types the miami herald would send
* the other woman (a case handled by leonard)
* heir to a pulp mill & timberlands fortune
* who shot and killed his insomniac wife
* a redheaded boy in greasy khakis (airport)
* a woman at the desk with instant, trained, formal politeness
* an old man sat in the small office, reading a true-crime magazine (at johnny's main street service), probably john hatch
* a large young man about nineeen (same place), ron hatch...and he is related to the girl who dashed in front of travis's car on the dark road
* his father is johnny hatch, who owns johnny's main street service, and john/johnny hatch is also the father of lillian "lilo" hatch, the girl who ran in front of travis's car...he had married wanda, a trashy girl from miami, and after divorcing her, she married henry perris ans johnny married again, couple more babies
* a drab, muttering woman (who serves the best sandwiches anywhere)
* foster goss, managing editor of the cypress call & journal
* a couple of hefty women pecking vintage typewriters
* a crickety octogenarian on the copy desk
* a couple of slack young men murmuring into phones
* a mini-girl got up
* county judge stan bowley
* foster goss's 17-year-old daugther married to a supermarket bag boy
* foster goss's 12-year-old spastic son
* a very very british lady on lennie's staff
* three arnsteads in phone book, j.a., and henry t. and cora
* cora arnstead, lew arnstead's mother
* buttercup, cora's big dog
* lew arnstead was going with the willoughbee girl, clara willoughbee
* jason was cora's first, henry her second, and then 16 long years later she had lew
* jason is 43 now, married 24 years, their first is a girl married at 16, great-grandson of cora, near six years old
* a lot of cheap, bright-smelling, loud-voice women...lew
* trash like them perrises, the wife is bedridden, the father was seen porking some girl in the next room
* the baby...mentioned in a note in lew arnstead's secret stash
* frannie, name mentioned in another note
* lilo's (or lillian) mother and father
* roddy barramore
* rhoda...name used in the perris story by betsy
* betsy kapp...writer of a note found by travis in lew arnstead's secret stash. divorced, works hostess in the dining room live oak lodge
* various photos, polaroids, of bare-naked women in lew's stash...thirteen different females, 18-32
* wanda, woman john hatch married, turned out to be trashy
* henry perris, a good mechanic who worked for johnny hatch when he wasn't porking wanda, johnny's trashy wife. after johnny gave wanda the boot, henry married her
* a fellow johnny hatch brought in to get the goods on wanda/henry
* some extraordinarily cruel men in the primitive areas of india
* purchase children
* people at the adventurer bar, the obligatory birdcage girl dancing, high school kids, ranch hands, packing-house workers, single swingers, married couples, bank clerks and secretaries and young realtors, carpenters and plumber, electricians and hard-wall plasterers, dentists, soldiers sailors, hospital technicians nurses bag boys store clerks and a handful of customary predators, middle-aged men in youthful clothing
* two quiet men...picked the right one (disturbance at bar)
* family celebration (lodge dining room), middle-aged males, a fresh-faced girl and her blushing husband-to-be, two quiet couples, three burly businessmen
* betsy kapp is from winter haven, here in cypress city when she was 12 to stay with an aunt
* betsy married a boy, killed in a terrible automobile accident, donny, donny's parents
* gregg kapp, betsy married after this, divorced now
* frank the bartender, at the lodge dining room where betsy kapp works tables and hostess
* helen, another waitress works with betsy kapp
* people sat in their dimly lighted rooms, hosts and hostesses (tv)
* raoul, betsy kapp's cat
* a gentleman friend of betsy kapp
* forney baither, one rotten baither boy in junior high with betsy kapp...killed in vietnam years ago
* a talented lady...defined poetry as a make-believe garden containing a real toad
* doctor grinner...gave betsy kapp a prescription
* mr. kaufman down the street (neighbor ob betsy kapp)
* a fat lady in red pants knelt three front yards away, troweling in her weeds
* some fat children were wallowing and whooping in the pool
* a dispatcher
* a crank caller, said he lives on haydon street
* homer...doing a new brochure for the chamber of commerce
* two gentle maidens about the john meynard keyes with meyer
* a very somber young man in orange garments (golf on tv)
* the silverstaff boy from up the road
* a pair of strangers behind the high desk (jailhouse)
* communications clerk
* some bloody, broken moaning teenagers
* billy cable's wife and three children
* big table of teenagers, whispering, haw-hawing at delicious private nonsense
* a few night people spaced along
* the waitress was a plump, pretty girl, dori, part of deputy lew arnstead's stable of women
* dori's husband, in service at one time, fred
* a variety of men lew arranges to have paid sex with dori severiss, others
* carolyn...dori's immediate boss, supervisor
* judge o'harran...one of dori's dates
* dori's wonderful crazy girlfriend, who signed on without blackmail or coercion
* mrs garnor...where dori initially worked, skimmed money
* five clerks...who fell under suspicion at garnor's boutique at woodsgate shopping center
* the credit people
* hired captain and three sort of vice-president-type people...more dates with dori and others
* donna lee...one of 14 polaroids that dori identifies for travis...another woman in lew's stable
* brenda dennis, another, dennison? denderson?
* miss geraldine kimmy...teaches third grade, another, got in a bind by groping some little kid
* linda featherman...another...died in vehicle accident
* jeannie dahl, #10, married and divorced, lives with mother, little kid, davie, lousy ex
* #11 was unknown, 12 was somebody she'd seen around town
* a spook...one of dori's dates
* immigration officer in miami...girls...kid sister...old man from peru
* dale featherman...rich daddy of linda featherman
* four generations of florida mone, and senators from washington and banker fro new york
* three brothers and sisters of linda featherman
* old men were browsing through the hand tools
* two middle-aged women and one young one behind the waist-high fence
* mr frandel...at the home building supply
* miguel...a past friend of travis...deceased, taught him how to throw a knife
* no australian among the eight men and three women spectators
* hullinger, reiter, rench, dowd, albritton, eggert, alderman, jenkins, hyatt, mccroan, featherman...names in the clerk's registry of property
* the spectacled girl
* stane, murrity, floyd, garrison, perris...names on mailboxes
* a successful film actress...exudes a degree of psychic musk
* a pretty lady who came aboard the busted flush with her ocelot
* two men with frank, biloxi, took a casino...two others. hutchason and orville
* nulia...takes care of henry perris's home, wife, bedridden, black woman
* johnny's attorney
* two bleached boys in bucket seats, three limber, noisy, bikinied young girls...tommy, bunny lee, norma jean a few of their names...old dolores...someone they know
* red...a sheriff's office employee
* cheery gray lady...nurse, hospital
* doctor
* heidi geis trumbill...at the end...at the busted flush, a woman from travis's past
real people, famous, fictionally famous, so forth so on
* arnold palmer
* floyd patterson
* alice (in wonderland)
* sherman (civil war)
* custer
* beatles
* jesus christ
* sibelius, belli, foreman, bailey...both fictional story character and real people, not sure about belli and foreman, hired gladiators
* lord god
* jesus q. christ
* doris day
* alexander botts, scattergood baines, tugboat annie
* mr phelps (mission impossible, tv show?), half brother of kataynzia dictator)
* barney, paris...tv characters i think barney fife? paris? who is spock only paris on mission impossible
* cinnamon...another?
* chief ironsides...television character
* marshall dillon (gunsmoke tv show)
* dan'l boone
* andy (probably means andy griffith, sheriff, mayberry r.f.d.)
* tarzan, sir galahad, robin hood, ben casey, cap'n ahab, the shadow, peter rabbit
* mr bonfa (music)
* maria toledo (portuguese singer?)
* alfred hitchcock
* myrna loy...william powell
* liz taylor
* burroughs, as in accounting machine
* montovani...piped music
* judas...as in goat
* mona lisa
May 30, 2021
This 12th novel in the Travis McGee series starts not with the beginning of a salvage job, as so many in the series do, but with McGee and Meyer in a car crash, getting shot at, and arrested for murder. So initially the story is about piling it higher and deeper on top of McGee to learn if he can dig fast enough to keep from getting buried in shit. Yes, he can dig fast enough to get out from under one pile and into another where the manure isn't accumulating quite as fast as in the one he'd escaped from. That's our McGee out of jail, but he can't leave the county, so he starts snooping around. The cast of off-the-rails characters grows, as do the complications, as McGee stirs up his own brand of shit while unraveling an almost too complicated whodunit about a years-ago armored car heist. It's a Travis McGee story, so you just knew that there would be a pot of gold out there somewhere for him to chase down. Plenty of action down the home stretch and MacDonald delivers not one but two of his trademark climactic action sequences. Here it's like a rollercoaster with two big humps before the hard brake at the finish. Actually, a great standalone crime/noir. Because it doesn't follow the series M.O., if you'd never read any of the others it doesn't matter. For McGee fans it's another episode. For noobs, it works on its own and maybe draws them into the series. MacDonald firing on all cylinders in this one. My one ding is that at times the narration slips into McGee lecturing himself in third-person, and although I'd agree that narrative move has a certain utility when it comes to characterization, for the most part, McGee talking to himself like that in a first-person POV was annoying. MacDonald also delivers a great metaphor for the mystery McGee is trying to solve: Before Pluto was discovered, the planet was inferred from other observed phenomena - it had to be there - just as the hidden antagonist of this story is waiting to be found and confronted by McGee.
May 19, 2017
The Long Lavender Look launches into the action with a dreary car trip back from a wedding turning bizarre with a woman running in front of their car causing Travis to look control and together with Meyer in the passenger seat they end up upside down in a roadside canal. Had that not been a weird enough night someone then takes some pot shots at them when walking back to town on the road, and finally in the morning when they get to a garage to arrange towing of the wrecked car the sheriff of a neighbouring county shows up and arrests them both for murder.
From here the tale of mystery grows to involve a prostitution ring being run by a police officer and the proceeds of a robbery which remain hidden.
Enjoyed this one, was probably in the top 3 of all the books in the series I've read so far.
From here the tale of mystery grows to involve a prostitution ring being run by a police officer and the proceeds of a robbery which remain hidden.
Enjoyed this one, was probably in the top 3 of all the books in the series I've read so far.
November 27, 2019
The 12th book in the Travis McGee series is, perhaps, my favorite so far. That’s saying something.
Travis and his pal Meyer are driving home from a wedding in Travis’ Rolls Royce “pickup” he’s named Miss Agnes. Late at night in rural, backwater Cypress County of Florida, a brief flash of a young woman darts into the road causing Travis to lose control and end up upside down and underwater in a drainage canal. Meyer is able to fish him out safely, but Miss Agnes will need to be towed out. But as they’re walking to the nearest “town” somebody shoots at them, believing them to be a couple of henchmen of a notorious local casino robber. This case of mistaken identity keeps on going as Travis is framed for murder and arrested by the local sheriff.
While the main plot involves Travis’ personal investigation to clear his name by finding what happened to the real robbers and murderers, there a number of subplots and deviations as well. But it’s a tightly packed narrative and fascinating to see unwind. Perhaps one of the saddest scenes in the entire Travis McGee series occurs in this book and involves the lovable, if odd, Betsy Kapp. The story can be pretty convoluted but it all comes together in the final chapters. Travis himself is heavily impacted by the events in the book and by the end, there can be nothing sweeter in the world than to get back home to slip F-18 and The Busted Flush houseboat.
Thankfully, for me, he still has nine more adventures to come.
Travis and his pal Meyer are driving home from a wedding in Travis’ Rolls Royce “pickup” he’s named Miss Agnes. Late at night in rural, backwater Cypress County of Florida, a brief flash of a young woman darts into the road causing Travis to lose control and end up upside down and underwater in a drainage canal. Meyer is able to fish him out safely, but Miss Agnes will need to be towed out. But as they’re walking to the nearest “town” somebody shoots at them, believing them to be a couple of henchmen of a notorious local casino robber. This case of mistaken identity keeps on going as Travis is framed for murder and arrested by the local sheriff.
While the main plot involves Travis’ personal investigation to clear his name by finding what happened to the real robbers and murderers, there a number of subplots and deviations as well. But it’s a tightly packed narrative and fascinating to see unwind. Perhaps one of the saddest scenes in the entire Travis McGee series occurs in this book and involves the lovable, if odd, Betsy Kapp. The story can be pretty convoluted but it all comes together in the final chapters. Travis himself is heavily impacted by the events in the book and by the end, there can be nothing sweeter in the world than to get back home to slip F-18 and The Busted Flush houseboat.
Thankfully, for me, he still has nine more adventures to come.
July 16, 2020
The Long Lavender Look is another fun Travis McGee mystery by MacDonald. This one takes place in South Florida. It begins when McGee just misses a young woman who runs in front of him on the road and causes him to swerve and land in 10 feet of swamp water. He then gets shot at trying to get help. After notifying the authorities he gets arrested and drawn into a murder which leads to fact gathering over a race-track robbery and assists the local sheriff.
John MacDonald’s books are a treasure. He wrote early about environmental issues and caught the beauty of Florida along with its sleaze and corruption. He reflects over all society, human psyches and is most engaging and thought provoking with his writing. His books are timeless and worth a reread.
John MacDonald’s books are a treasure. He wrote early about environmental issues and caught the beauty of Florida along with its sleaze and corruption. He reflects over all society, human psyches and is most engaging and thought provoking with his writing. His books are timeless and worth a reread.
September 23, 2024
Not my genre .. antithetical to my usual romance with necessary HEA.
These books definitely must appeal to males with a very macho protagonist.
Lots of bad guys and women in this tale.
Most interesting 2 me is his thinking that reflects his values. Liked his friendship with Meyer.
I guessed the bad guy before the end.
Dark story. Sleazy & complicated.
Possibly I might read the first book in this series ..
hoping the cynicism is less.
But not my reading happy place ….
I branched out and tried a popular author .. now I know more :)
This tale was a gotcha incident in middle FL (and unfortunately did not have much boats or coast).
These books definitely must appeal to males with a very macho protagonist.
Lots of bad guys and women in this tale.
Most interesting 2 me is his thinking that reflects his values. Liked his friendship with Meyer.
I guessed the bad guy before the end.
Dark story. Sleazy & complicated.
Possibly I might read the first book in this series ..
hoping the cynicism is less.
But not my reading happy place ….
I branched out and tried a popular author .. now I know more :)
This tale was a gotcha incident in middle FL (and unfortunately did not have much boats or coast).
January 17, 2019
"The Long Lavender Look" is the twelfth book in the 21-book Travis McGee series about a guy who lives on a houseboat in the waters off of Florida and never holds a regular job. Instead, McGee lounges about on his boat, putters about, romances whatever lady drops by, and, once in a while, when he is short on funds, takes on a salvage assignment. Now, that doesn't mean that he dives under the sea for buried treasure. On the contrary, he takes on the wounded sparrows, the people who have been wronged, who need a knight in shining armor, and takes as his fee fifty percent of whatever is recovered. It's a way of life and it's a damn bit better than punching a nine-to-five clock for forty odd years till social security kicks in.
Although this is a series about a guy who lives on a houseboat, this particular novel doesn't take place on the water or, for that matter, anywhere near the water. Rather, McGee and his erstwhile buddy, Meyer, find themselves in a bit of trouble on the way back from a wedding through the rural byways of Florida. There's a near-miss of a young lady running along a country road and the pickup takes a dive into the watery canal. Before they can recover the truck from its new resting place, they are thrown in the local jail, accused of murder and robbery and Meyer is beaten to a bloody pulp. There's no client in this one and not much to salvage for McGee, but it is a southern country pulp mystery in a small county ruled by a sheriff who has an iron hand. McGee is an outsider and it sure looks like he murdered a local guy, at least before he starts poking around and digging up the dirty laundry that no one dreamed existed beneath the surface of this good old fashioned key lime pie backwoods world, a world of murder, torture, blackmail, prostitution, and dirty double-dealing, a world that might just be rotten to its core.
This is a finely tuned novel that may be among the best of the entire series. MacDonald creates a cast of characters that is just amazing from the prickly sheriff to the cocktail waitress who thinks she is playing a part in a movie to the deputy who has an entire business running on the side and the backwoods swamp maiden siren who no one can resist. There are no weak spots in this one, nothing that doesn't fit in. Although this is not the first mystery set in some tiny little Southern town where strangers are never all that welcome, Macdonald really doed a great job with this backdrop. Five stars.
Although this is a series about a guy who lives on a houseboat, this particular novel doesn't take place on the water or, for that matter, anywhere near the water. Rather, McGee and his erstwhile buddy, Meyer, find themselves in a bit of trouble on the way back from a wedding through the rural byways of Florida. There's a near-miss of a young lady running along a country road and the pickup takes a dive into the watery canal. Before they can recover the truck from its new resting place, they are thrown in the local jail, accused of murder and robbery and Meyer is beaten to a bloody pulp. There's no client in this one and not much to salvage for McGee, but it is a southern country pulp mystery in a small county ruled by a sheriff who has an iron hand. McGee is an outsider and it sure looks like he murdered a local guy, at least before he starts poking around and digging up the dirty laundry that no one dreamed existed beneath the surface of this good old fashioned key lime pie backwoods world, a world of murder, torture, blackmail, prostitution, and dirty double-dealing, a world that might just be rotten to its core.
This is a finely tuned novel that may be among the best of the entire series. MacDonald creates a cast of characters that is just amazing from the prickly sheriff to the cocktail waitress who thinks she is playing a part in a movie to the deputy who has an entire business running on the side and the backwoods swamp maiden siren who no one can resist. There are no weak spots in this one, nothing that doesn't fit in. Although this is not the first mystery set in some tiny little Southern town where strangers are never all that welcome, Macdonald really doed a great job with this backdrop. Five stars.
March 6, 2018
This would be my 12th McGee quest (that "amiable and incurable tilter of conformity, boat-bum Quixote, hopeless sucker for starving kittens, women in distress and large, loose sums of money") and even if the formula stays the same my enjoyment of the series just keeps getting better. Although I am starting to wonder if Trav is going start suffering future sexual hang-ups from the fact that almost every lady he beds seems to wind up dead...
I think the later novels might land a little flat for readers not familiar with McGee but for those who already love him and his dry humor this one was filled with one line gems. Such as "Every year there seems to be more fat children, and they seem to be getting noisier" and "Ah, she was saucy". Some real knee slappers for the hardcore McGee fan. Plus the story line was a twist on the usual salvage recovery scene as McGee finds himself charged with murder after a late night accident and must prove his own innocence.
And as usual in a MacDonald book there is a slice of social commentary that stuns me in both its relevance and accuracy:
"Are cops pigs? If I operate within a system where juvenile court cannot touch rich kids, where the innocent -meaning those presumed innocent because they have not yet been tried - are jailed with the guilty when they can't raise bail, where judicial wisdom is conditioned by friendship and influence, where there are two kinds of law, one for blacks and one for whites; then if I go by the book, I am a kind of Judas goat, and if I bend the rules to improve - on my terms - the structure of local law, I am running my own little police state. I'd better get out of it because I can't live with either solution."
Right on the money John. Even 48 years later.
I think the later novels might land a little flat for readers not familiar with McGee but for those who already love him and his dry humor this one was filled with one line gems. Such as "Every year there seems to be more fat children, and they seem to be getting noisier" and "Ah, she was saucy". Some real knee slappers for the hardcore McGee fan. Plus the story line was a twist on the usual salvage recovery scene as McGee finds himself charged with murder after a late night accident and must prove his own innocence.
And as usual in a MacDonald book there is a slice of social commentary that stuns me in both its relevance and accuracy:
"Are cops pigs? If I operate within a system where juvenile court cannot touch rich kids, where the innocent -meaning those presumed innocent because they have not yet been tried - are jailed with the guilty when they can't raise bail, where judicial wisdom is conditioned by friendship and influence, where there are two kinds of law, one for blacks and one for whites; then if I go by the book, I am a kind of Judas goat, and if I bend the rules to improve - on my terms - the structure of local law, I am running my own little police state. I'd better get out of it because I can't live with either solution."
Right on the money John. Even 48 years later.
June 21, 2019
COUNTDOWN: Mid-20th Century North American Crime
BOOK 167 (of 250)
I've read these first 12 books in order and I like Travis very much. But...
HOOK - 4 stars: Travis and Meyer are traveling a dark road, a figure runs in front of them,and their car dives into the swamps. They walk all night to the nearest gas station, and are arrested for murder, jailed....and then things get bad. One of the best openings in the series.
PACE - 2: Oh, boy! This cast is huge. Travis and Meyer and good cops and bad cops and a ton of bad guys. And way too many hookers with backstories when 2 or 3 would have sufficed.
PLOT - 3: A truck with over $900,000 is unloaded. The money disappears. It's 4 years later, and the leader of the robbery gang is out of jail and headed for the cash, along with a number of others. If you've seen the film "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World", then you know this story and you know there are immense complications with all these people running around. Who'll find the loot?
CAST - 3: Travis at his best, staying in Florida near his Busted Flush houseboat.
ATMOSPHERE - 4: It's the little things like Travis hearing the odd howls of Florida's black panthers. Or the walls of skeeters. Or the humidity. Or the oh-so-sweet air-conditioning and a nap. Nicely done.
Summary - 3.2. Travis, it's been great. I'm glad Miss Agnes [a Rolls/Truck concoction in bright blue) survived a roll in the swamp. An ex-lover is back to help you heal, physically and emotionally. I'm gonna read this entire series.
BOOK 167 (of 250)
I've read these first 12 books in order and I like Travis very much. But...
HOOK - 4 stars: Travis and Meyer are traveling a dark road, a figure runs in front of them,and their car dives into the swamps. They walk all night to the nearest gas station, and are arrested for murder, jailed....and then things get bad. One of the best openings in the series.
PACE - 2: Oh, boy! This cast is huge. Travis and Meyer and good cops and bad cops and a ton of bad guys. And way too many hookers with backstories when 2 or 3 would have sufficed.
PLOT - 3: A truck with over $900,000 is unloaded. The money disappears. It's 4 years later, and the leader of the robbery gang is out of jail and headed for the cash, along with a number of others. If you've seen the film "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World", then you know this story and you know there are immense complications with all these people running around. Who'll find the loot?
CAST - 3: Travis at his best, staying in Florida near his Busted Flush houseboat.
ATMOSPHERE - 4: It's the little things like Travis hearing the odd howls of Florida's black panthers. Or the walls of skeeters. Or the humidity. Or the oh-so-sweet air-conditioning and a nap. Nicely done.
Summary - 3.2. Travis, it's been great. I'm glad Miss Agnes [a Rolls/Truck concoction in bright blue) survived a roll in the swamp. An ex-lover is back to help you heal, physically and emotionally. I'm gonna read this entire series.
November 6, 2012
I'm considering myself lucky to be among the many readers savoring the "Travis McGee" adventures, and can't wait to read another exploit of his....... a salvage consultant philosopher McGee was just full of toughness, skill, and sensible character that'll keep you on the edge.
McGee was heading home with his best friend an Economist Meyer after attending a friend's wedding in Cypress County with "Miss Agness" ( an ancient rolls-royce car converted into a pick up)suddenly a young woman run into Miss Agnes on a highway. While Travis was trying to avert Miss Agness so not to hit the young lady they ended up to a deep swamp.
As they walked for help in the middle of the night some car stop and they got shot at, and in the morning ended up in jail framed-up for killing some guy during the night. McGee, as a salvage operator he has to give up some of his fortune this time to save his life, and Meyer's.
McGee was heading home with his best friend an Economist Meyer after attending a friend's wedding in Cypress County with "Miss Agness" ( an ancient rolls-royce car converted into a pick up)suddenly a young woman run into Miss Agnes on a highway. While Travis was trying to avert Miss Agness so not to hit the young lady they ended up to a deep swamp.
As they walked for help in the middle of the night some car stop and they got shot at, and in the morning ended up in jail framed-up for killing some guy during the night. McGee, as a salvage operator he has to give up some of his fortune this time to save his life, and Meyer's.
April 13, 2013
I have enjoyed the John D. MacDonald mysteries that I have read to this point. This one, however, had a different setting and some very perverse people. I particularly enjoyed his bisecting his characters emotions and defining their motives, strengths and weaknesses. It's like he wanted to major in psychology, but decided that drinking and dating was easier. This story was a little too complicated and convuluted for me. It had twists and turns that seemed never to end. I enjoyed the book which was an easy read, but wished he had ended it earlier when he was down to about ten suspects. Travis McGee is a man's man, of the Jack Reacher type, and his characters all seemed to have just escaped from a Jack Nicholson movie.
June 23, 2019
I liked everything about this one except Meyer's reduced role in the story. I was really enjoying his increased presence in the previous books. Hopefully there's more to come from him in the remaining nine books.
After the previous adventure, in Mexico, this story is entirely set back in Florida, and mostly in a rural central area, where McGee and Meyer narrowly miss running over a scantilly clad woman who crosses the road, dunping the beloved Rolls Royce pickup into the swamp. Then they are shot at and wrongly accused of a local man's murder. In custody, Meyer is roughed up, and eventually departs for Miami to recuperate, on ve the two are cleared of the murder. But McGee has no choice but to stick around, at the Sheriff's request. But maybe there is a salvage opportunity here; the deceased apparently has stashed a major score from a race track robbery. As he starts nosing around, the rotten underbelly of this depraved little deep South hamlet is revealed.
Many other reviewers have criticized McGee's behavior in this one, particularly his treatment of Betsy, the large breasted waitress who is on the periphery of the trouble and becomes a casualty. I don't see how his actions here are all that different from previous books. McGee is harsh and judgemental, yes, but there's a still heart at his core. MacDonald/McGee's disparaging comments on how easy women could be turned to prostitution by the lure of the cost of the latest shoes and sundresses is certainly cold (and sour, misogynistic commentary, no doubt), but I think he feels something for Betsy after his initial encounter, despite her tawdry nature and manipulative role-playing.
A nice action sequence at end felt just right, and overall this one is high on my list of the 12 I've read so far.
After the previous adventure, in Mexico, this story is entirely set back in Florida, and mostly in a rural central area, where McGee and Meyer narrowly miss running over a scantilly clad woman who crosses the road, dunping the beloved Rolls Royce pickup into the swamp. Then they are shot at and wrongly accused of a local man's murder. In custody, Meyer is roughed up, and eventually departs for Miami to recuperate, on ve the two are cleared of the murder. But McGee has no choice but to stick around, at the Sheriff's request. But maybe there is a salvage opportunity here; the deceased apparently has stashed a major score from a race track robbery. As he starts nosing around, the rotten underbelly of this depraved little deep South hamlet is revealed.
Many other reviewers have criticized McGee's behavior in this one, particularly his treatment of Betsy, the large breasted waitress who is on the periphery of the trouble and becomes a casualty. I don't see how his actions here are all that different from previous books. McGee is harsh and judgemental, yes, but there's a still heart at his core. MacDonald/McGee's disparaging comments on how easy women could be turned to prostitution by the lure of the cost of the latest shoes and sundresses is certainly cold (and sour, misogynistic commentary, no doubt), but I think he feels something for Betsy after his initial encounter, despite her tawdry nature and manipulative role-playing.
A nice action sequence at end felt just right, and overall this one is high on my list of the 12 I've read so far.
March 2, 2017
This Travis McGee reveals that JDM appreciates cats, and understands women and cops as well as he understands varieties of male personalities.
page 107 "She wrapped us in her compensatory aromas of fate, tragic romance, inevitable loneliness of human beings. She wept real tears for a variety of reasons. She made us both special people in a world of clods, because otherwise would have been merely a dining room hostess who had brought the tall stranger back home for what the British sometimes call a bit of slap and tickle. I had, in short, so won her reluctant heart that she could not help herself. And we had to live forever with our sense of guilt and human weakness. It happened, of course, because it was written in the starts that it had to happen."...and I fatuously gratified by the implied compliment accepted.
page 159 "It is a useful and profitable sideline practiced by venal, underpaid, crooked police officers in every urban area of the nation and the world where police administration leaves enough room for improvisation. A certain number of females are always going to get into trouble with the law. A certain percentage of them are always going to be physically attractive. The investigating officer can make a deal that is mutually advantageous. Play ball or face a conviction, honey. The procurer cop has advantages denied to the free-lance pimp. He can more safely strong-arm the unruly customer. He can protect his string from arrest, and at the same time keep them in line with the threat of arrest. If he is careful in his selection, they will never fink on him because they, in turn, have too much to lose by any public exposure of the relationship."
page 169 "There are no hookers with hearts of gold. Just lazy, greedy, dull-minded girls whose greatest joys are the clothing rack and the mirror and the makeup table. Such a simple little task, to take that ever-familiar tumescent rigidity into the slippery muscular depths.......Give him the mirror-practiced expressions, and use the familiar ways to ready him again, because the better you work him, the more chance of a tip, and the thirty-dollar blue sandals are on layaway, and they are darling."..."No evil in either hooker or mercenary. Just laziness, a small familiar greed, a mild anticipation of unimportant sensation, and the ever-challenging problem of what kind of pretty to buy with the fee."
page 194 "Had Raoul been a little kid, he would have been standing crosslegged and moaning. When I opened the door he went at a humpbacked lope to a grassy corner, squatted and with a dreamy distant stare, emptied the inflated feline bladder. He came strolling back into the kitchen, stared into his empty dish and said, "Raoul?" I opened the cupboards until I found his canned glop, whined one open on the electric machine, tapped it into his dish. He ate a few hungry gobbles, then looked up and walked out of the kitchen. I followed him into the living room and bedroom. He looked in the bathroom and turned around and came out again, saying "Raoul?" "Not here, furry friend. And she won't be." He sat down and began to wash. When in doubt, wash. Before I locked up, I asked the cat what the hell I was going to do with him. He seemed to have amber-eyed confidence that I was going to make every effort to maintain him in the comfort to which he had become accustomed....and to let him out oftener.
JDM wrote a book on cats, I'll have to find a copy.
page 107 "She wrapped us in her compensatory aromas of fate, tragic romance, inevitable loneliness of human beings. She wept real tears for a variety of reasons. She made us both special people in a world of clods, because otherwise would have been merely a dining room hostess who had brought the tall stranger back home for what the British sometimes call a bit of slap and tickle. I had, in short, so won her reluctant heart that she could not help herself. And we had to live forever with our sense of guilt and human weakness. It happened, of course, because it was written in the starts that it had to happen."...and I fatuously gratified by the implied compliment accepted.
page 159 "It is a useful and profitable sideline practiced by venal, underpaid, crooked police officers in every urban area of the nation and the world where police administration leaves enough room for improvisation. A certain number of females are always going to get into trouble with the law. A certain percentage of them are always going to be physically attractive. The investigating officer can make a deal that is mutually advantageous. Play ball or face a conviction, honey. The procurer cop has advantages denied to the free-lance pimp. He can more safely strong-arm the unruly customer. He can protect his string from arrest, and at the same time keep them in line with the threat of arrest. If he is careful in his selection, they will never fink on him because they, in turn, have too much to lose by any public exposure of the relationship."
page 169 "There are no hookers with hearts of gold. Just lazy, greedy, dull-minded girls whose greatest joys are the clothing rack and the mirror and the makeup table. Such a simple little task, to take that ever-familiar tumescent rigidity into the slippery muscular depths.......Give him the mirror-practiced expressions, and use the familiar ways to ready him again, because the better you work him, the more chance of a tip, and the thirty-dollar blue sandals are on layaway, and they are darling."..."No evil in either hooker or mercenary. Just laziness, a small familiar greed, a mild anticipation of unimportant sensation, and the ever-challenging problem of what kind of pretty to buy with the fee."
page 194 "Had Raoul been a little kid, he would have been standing crosslegged and moaning. When I opened the door he went at a humpbacked lope to a grassy corner, squatted and with a dreamy distant stare, emptied the inflated feline bladder. He came strolling back into the kitchen, stared into his empty dish and said, "Raoul?" I opened the cupboards until I found his canned glop, whined one open on the electric machine, tapped it into his dish. He ate a few hungry gobbles, then looked up and walked out of the kitchen. I followed him into the living room and bedroom. He looked in the bathroom and turned around and came out again, saying "Raoul?" "Not here, furry friend. And she won't be." He sat down and began to wash. When in doubt, wash. Before I locked up, I asked the cat what the hell I was going to do with him. He seemed to have amber-eyed confidence that I was going to make every effort to maintain him in the comfort to which he had become accustomed....and to let him out oftener.
JDM wrote a book on cats, I'll have to find a copy.
December 31, 2021
Most of The Long Lavender Look really deserves 3 stars, it's not one of the better McGee novels. Too much of the novel involves McGee conveniently running into exactly the right person to unload a lot of relevant backstory at just the right time. However, [slight spoilers ahead] TLLL is accurate in its portrayal of widespread local corruption throughout Florida - everyone is corrupt so trust no one. And the end includes a touching reference to a previous McGee novel, One Fearful Yellow Eye. I would give this 3.5 stars, but Goodreads doesn't allow half-star ratings, hence the four stars.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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