With the fifth in the Travis McGee series, MacDonald really hits his stride. There was something really electric—sexy, scary, violent—in the air in 1965, the year this one was published; in fact there's a new book out about the year. Think of the early Emma Peel episodes of The Avengers, or the first season of Star Trek (which really premiered in 1966, but was surely on the drawing boards by '65). The plot is driven, from a distance, by fallout from Castro's takeover of Cuba. We learn that McGee almost participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion, but he was stopped by "a nervous little C.I.A. man with glasses and a rule book...It occurred to him that I wasn't a Cuban." A theme of betrayal is established with reference to the grisly fate of many who initially supported Castro but then turned against him and suffered consequences. The theme continues to American hedonists who couldn't care less about the details of Caribbean politics, but who are entrapped by their own greed. McGee is approached by Sam Taggart, an old friend he hasn't seen in a couple years, who is much the worse for wear. Taggart shows McGee one of a large set of solid gold figurines he came by fairly honestly when down in Mexico, and wants McGee to help him recover the rest. Soon Taggart is out of the picture, brutally murdered in a cheap motel room with a knife. After a quick research expedition up to New York (wherein he beds a prim Bostonian antiquities dealer), McGee sets off to Mexico with Nora Gardino, Taggart's ex-fiancee, to poke around and maybe recover the figurines, and maybe get some revenge. Soon, of course, Nora & Trav wind up in the sack; in fact in this one McGee has an impressive bedpost notch count of five!McGee sports nastier attitudes than we've seen from him in the series thus far. Here he is regarding Felicia, a Mexican prostitute/kitchen help that Taggart shacked up with (and McGee's #3): "As one is prone to do with animals, it was a temptation to anthropomorphize this girl past her capacity, to attribute to her niceties of feeling and emotion she could never sense, merely because she was so alive, had such a marvelous body, had such savage eyes and instincts. She was just a vain, childish, cantankerous Mexican whore, shrewd and stupid, canny and lazy. She had done all her mourning for Sam Taggart, and had enjoyed the drama of it. She was not legend. She did not have a heart of gold, or a heart of ice. She had a very ordinary animal heart, bloody and violent, responsive to affection, quick in fury, incapable of any kind of lasting loyalty."McGee indulges in some melodramatic sadism as he ties a girl up between two trees, arms stretched out, to interrogate her. Here the book continues the theme at the center of The Quick Red Fox of orgies & kinky sex. The girl describes the scene at Cal Tomberlin's, the ultimate target: "I don't mind fun and games. But that got a little too rich for me, believe me. He had a lot of kids up there that weekend. I knew most of them. It got crazy up there. You couldn't walk without stepping on a jumbled up pile of kids and getting pulled down into a lot of messy fooling around. I got out of there." In this scene we see how he enjoys inflicting pain, to try to make people understand the hurt they have caused others. "She would have to learn how to imitate defiance. There wasn't any of the genuine article left. It had crawled off into the brush behind the clearing to die and rot. I wondered if she could sense how it was all going to be for her from now on. The jackals can always sense that kind of vulnerability. Imitations of defiance amuse them. They travel in packs. They would hand her around. She wouldn't last very well." Charming. And of course she doesn't. After this episode, McGee proceeds to get drunk with an uncomprehending villager: "Drink to me, my friend. Drink to this poisonous bag of meat named McGee. And drink to little broken blondes, and a dead black dog, and a knife in the back of a woman, and a knife in the throat of a friend. Drink to a burned foot, and death at sea, and stinking prisons and obscene gold idols. Drink to loveless love, stolen money, and a power of attorney, mi amigo. Drink to lust and crime and terror, the three unholy ultimates, and drink to all the problems which have no solution in this world, and at best a dubious one in the next." On this drunk, he bangs Felicia—the first time we've seen McGee betray his imagined nobility in the bedroom. The body count really piles up in this one, and I'll admit to having a hard time keeping all the characters dead and alive straight. This problem has led me to finally institute a practice, which I believe I will continue in all my further reading, of underlining the name of each character upon first appearance in a book. Finally we get to L.A. and the stalking of Cal Tomberlin. McGee is struck by the amount of noise surrounding him upon his return to the States. Here's a nice passage where McGee/MacDonald sums up of the feel of 1965 America: "There is a spurious vitality about all this noise. But under it, when you come back, you can sense another more significant and more enduring vitality. It has been somewhat hammered down of late. The bell ringers and flag fondlers have been busily peddling their notion that to make America Strong, we must march in close and obedient ranks, to the sound of their little tin whistle. The life-adjustment educators, in strange alliance with the hucksters of consumer goods, have been doing their damnedest to makes us all think alike, look alike, smell alike and die alike, amidst all the pockety-queek of unserviceable home appliances, our armpits astringent, nasal passages clear, insurance program adequate, sex life satisfying, returement assured, medical plan comprehensive, hair free of dandruff, tie payments manageable, waistline firm, bowels open."But the other vitality is still there, that rancorous , sardonic, wonderful insistence on the right to dissent, to question, to object, to raise holy hell and in direst extremity, to laugh the self-appointed squad leaders off the face of the earth with great whoops of dirty disdainful glee. Suppress friction and machine runs fine. Suppress friction, and a society runs down." Kind of a foreshadowing, no, of the way the rest of the decade is going to play out? Although I think we'll see that McGee has real problems with the kinds of rebellion that do take place.Nice bit right after that : "I could almost breathe the air, late April air, compounded of interesting hydro-carbons."McGee/MacDonald has an interesting habit in the early books of using the word "stoned" to mean "drunk". I think it did mean that for a time in the sixties, before marijuana became prevalent. OK, one more great passage, wherein Trav looks on the upside: "...except for Nora, the whole thing had seemed like a long bath in yesterday's dish water. The house lights faded the stars, but I looked up at them and told myself my recent vision of reality had been from a toad's-eye view. The stars, McGee, look down on a world where thousands of 4-H kids are raising prize cattle and sheep. The Green Bay Packers, of their own volition, join in the Lord's Prayer before a game. Many good and gentle people have fallen in love this night. At this moment, thousands of women are labor with the fruit of good marriage. Thousands of kids sleep the deep sleep which comes form the long practice hours for competitive swimming and tennis. Good men have died today, leaving hearts sick with loss. In quiet rooms young girls are writing poems. People are laughing together, in safe places. "You have been on the underside of the world, McGee, but there is a top side too, where there is wonder, innocence, trust, love and gentleness. You made the decision, boy. You live down here, where the animals are, so stay with it."From here, there are just a few more fucks and deaths to go. For me: quite satisfying.
A DEADLY SHADE OF GOLD. (1965). John D. MacDonald. ***.Most of the Travis McGee novels by MacDonald that I have read incorporate relatively straight-forward plots along with philosophical asides by Travis. In this novel, however, you need graph paper along side your reading chair to keep track of where the plot is going. It’s as if in Genesis, the first chapter in the Bible, the narrator who was writing all the ‘begats,’ stopped after each issue and started to tell of the life of the subject begotten. Once having figured out where the plot line really goes, the story becomes more typical of a Travis McGee dilemma A friend of Travis’s gives his a call one evening His friend, Sam Taggart, hasn’t been around for about three years – ever since he had broken up with his girlfriend. Taggart tells Travis on the phone that he needs help, but also discusses the possibility that he might be able to see his old girlfriend (Nora Gardino) to see if things could be patched up. They agree to meet the next day, Travis agreeing to bring his es along. When they got there, they found Taggart dead; someone had murdered him rather messily using a knife. McGee learns that his old pal had gotten mixed up with a group of men who had stolen a batch of pre-Columbian art from a wealthy collector. He, in turn, had stolen them from the original thieves, and they wanted their loot back. The only clue McGee had was the only piece of sculpture that his friend had with him that he had shown to McGee before he was killed. Supposedly, there were twenty-eight of these various pieces, all covered with gold plating. Now we set McGee off on a search for the missing pieces and the crew who now had them. His search leads him to a variety of information sources who help him pinpoint potential next steps. The search leads him to Mexico, where he ferrets out the original collector, who is surrounded by a batch of guards and other men who have infiltrated his organization. They are no match for McGee, however, and the bodies begin to fall. This is a reasonably good thriller, but is diluted with too many side plots and diversions. It is not typical of the fine-tuning MacDonald usually gave to his plots.
Do You like book A Deadly Shade Of Gold (1996)?
I read many John D MacDonald novels in my 20s when I had just landed my first job at the book clubs. I recall them being entertaining suspense novels, and I might have characterized them with a dismissive "fun." On a recent trip to Florida I was inspired to re-visit the incomparable Travis McGee, the Ft. Lauderdale resident who lives on a house boat called the Busted Flush (yes, won in a poker game) and who is available to solve mysterious incidents where the wrong people get hurt and the bad guys are still out there. I was thrilled and surprised to read to read this smart, funny, literate, slightly old fashioned story where the characters are memorable (the shady guys and the other ones), the women available, the narrator compassionate yet calculating, and the plot just dense enough. The author himself turns out to be an interesting guy: returned from WWII and decided he didn't want the corporate job daddy had lined up for him. Just wanted to write. These are worth reading---treat yourself to a well written TM adventure while sitting on the beach this summer, in Ft. Lauderdale or anywhere else.
—Jill Sansone
Body count = 11. Booty count = 4.This is the one where Travis' old friend Sam Taggert shows up with a small golden idol. Death and mayhem ensue as Travis chases the gold to Mexico and then to LA. He falls in love once, beds two women (separately) for strategic purposes, and is "healed" by another. Funny how, with awesomely 1965-ish style, Travis can sexualize even a dying woman. ("She spasmed once, twitched those stupendous legs, and flattened slowly, slowly against the ground." Or this from later on... "No more the bikinied prance, thigh-swing, hair salt, gamin sun bunny smile...") Meanwhile, some of the politics are very familiar. ("If you create a radical right, their vicious nonsense pushes more people toward the radical left... The heart of contemporary propaganda [is to] strengthen ignorant terrible men who believe themselves to be perfect patriots." 1965 or 2015?Love me some Travis McGee.
—Kevin
McGee is a boat bum with knightly codes of honor, and he describes himself as a lazy man taking his retirement in installments, meaning he only works when his funds become exhausted. He considers himself a salvage expert, as he specializes in retrieving assets lost by his client, though usually to human culprits rather than natural disaster or accidental mishap, and he splits the proceeds with his client upon recovery. While he claims to be an emotionless business man and professional, his clients tend to be wronged friends and acquaintances, and the lengths to which he goes to achieve his sense of justice are beyond acquisition of assets. There is the sense in this series McGee has survived a myriad of tragedies and wishes the world would get its act together so he could be left alone, but about this, the author is purposely vague, and the mystery gives McGee a flawed superhero quality. In "A Deadly Shade of Gold", all of these things are true, and as can be expected, McGee vows to not stop until his justice has been exacted. Along the way, McGee scolds himself when he errs, draws unflattering caricatures of himself, and allows sometimes for the possibility, however scant, he may be a man of substance. The build-up to the tasty suspense is slow and teasing, and twisted with wry wisdom regarding the condition of humanity as a race and the foolhardiness of its members in their not so individual quest for individuality. There are great crime series characters, but Travis McGee is that genre's Most Interesting Man.
—Greg Raleigh
