8 jun 15#46 from macdonald for me, the 15th travis mcgee story. just finished One Fearful Yellow Eye, an excellent 5+ star story. i've noted in the last few stories that the "bad" guy isn't on the main stage much...but in the last...yes and no.15 jun 15...i'm back. now i am reading this one, having completed A Tan and Sandy Silence18 jun 15finished. good story. i liked it. was not as impressed with this story's wind-up as i am impressed with some of the other macdonald stories. don't know why, but a time or two i was reminded of those old westerns i watched on television, the good guy in bed, busted up, ribs broke or something, those attending the hero distraught...or maybe gun-shot, the doc dropping a chunk of lead in a metal pan. the character of sprenger did not ring true, not at the end, and he kept not ringing true right up to the magical moment a gun and not lead floated through the air. the deuce coupe de diablo squealed rubber. the curtain closed after a fashion. not as impressed with a story when a character enters stage right to provide the audience with an explanation for why the gods are so fickle, but that's the way it goes. and so it goes. onward and upwardstory beginsafter seven years of bickering and fussing, the fort lauderdamndale city fathers, on a hot tuesday in september, killed off a life-style and turned me into a vagrant."permanent habitation aboard all watercraft within the city limits is prohibited."verily. hallellujah. what the city fathers doth say, it shalt be so.when i was in florida...this would be a few years after what travis experienced (hey, this really happened...nicely ambiguous?) the city fathers of another locale decreed that no more than one person shall inhabit a bedroom. no sleepover. one to a room, unrelated. need to fill the vacancies, dearest one. crowd noises, munching, munching. cue the commercial.time place scene setting* fort lauderdale, florida, bahia mar, slip f-18, berth of the busted flush travis's barge-like houseboat* one of the less offensive steak houses* a laundromat! travis does his laundry!* tuesday in september, and time passes, noted with phrases like "friday morning"..."early saturday morning"..."two weeks ago on the 7th, a thursday"...may 22nd...the 27th of september (the dust-up)...nine more shopping days till christmas...a cold day in january by story end* out and about the water around fort lauderdale, miami* 1st atlantic bank and trust company* a small dark bar in an old hotel* miss agnes, travis's 30s model rolls royce that another had cut down and converted to a pickup, painted bright blue* fedderman stamp & coin company, corner of s.w. 11th street miami* royal biscayne yacht club* jane lawson's residence* the winner's circle bar, where travis meets, talks with nucci* the fountainbleau and its hotel lounge, one of many where travis goes trolling for information* other places are merely mentioned...the contessa, another hotel lounge, other boats, the broomstick owned operated by geraldine, the 'bama girl owned operated by the alabama tiger and where the longest houseboat party in existence has been happening, the west bank, where jenny thurston paints* the contessa hotel plays a larger role, room #1802, where travis stays* there are often scenes from travis's past, in this one, a scene from war, a plane and men parachuting from same* beach, seascape* restaurant of the contessa* no name island, a kidney-bean-shaped island* biscayne bay, florida bay, scenes on the water* the bay-front home of cathy kerr* the munequita, little doll i think spanish, travis' smaller faster boat* a rental boat* a hospital* harmony towers, where a.a. moojah resides...community room #7* helen's book nook* cerritos, a leather, luggage store* sprenger investment associates* candle key* rocket beach* vegas* regal marine, where a boat is rentedmajor characters* travis megee, our hero, six-foot-four-inch 1st-person eye-narrator, beach bum, salvage something or other, six feet four, had a brother who committed suicide...can't remember what mcgee story that nugget is to be found, but it is there.* meyer, travis's friend and economist, lives aboard his boat, the john meynard keynes* hirsh fedderman, 72-year-old, owns operates his stamp/coin shop, his wife died of cancer twenty years ago, his sons emigrated to israel where they married. he has seven grandchildren* mary alice mcdermit, one of two employees of hirsh fedderman, and she keeps the investment records, she is a 27-year-old, and has been with hirsh for five years. she is separated from her husband who is a fruitcake, puts the harm on anyone who gets close to her* jane lawson, a 40-year-old, has been with hirsh for fifteen years, she is a service widow and before her husband, jerry, died, they produced some children, a couple teenage daughters, judy the younger, linda the elder* frank sprenger, client of hirsh fedderman, also with the outfit, a kind of bookkeeper/enforcer. miami is described as neutral territory and the local group has parameters they are not to cross. sprenger, sounds like, is with them. his cover is as an investment consultant and he has a few legitimate clients in that business, 2nd floor on lincoln roadminor characters, scene/setting-type characters, character with names, characters w/o a name* judy lawson, jane's rebellious daughter* alabama tiger, one of the residents of bahia mar where travis keeps his houseboat. the tiger has a boat called the 'bama girl* happy girls* two battalions of us, some of our people, our airplane driver, all related to a story from travis's past, war-time.* 1600 people living on boats within the city limits of fort lauderdale* embittered audience* geraldine, who has the broomstick* johnny dow...and in this story, this is the first we see more of johnny, more than a name mention. he has a small part, a small speech, scroom, a word he uses before he exits the stage, and he too, lives on the water among travis and meyer and the others* one of the tiger's playgirls* irv, someone meyer saw, to do with the city fathers' edict* hines, west, brookman, weil (famous stamp collections, could be actual/real, too)* w.b. perot (signature)...and this name is possibly real, as well* clients of hirsh* robert siegel auction* dealers* comeskey in utica, tippett over in sarasota (dealers)* stanely gibbons...and this name is possibly real, too* sam singer (was stamp doctor in this country, back around world war one)* zareski, in paris (another stamp doctor/forger)* a german who is the best yet (stamp doctor)* two fellows who came with sprenger to visit hirsh* ray & roger weil...two stamp guys* some newspaper guy in new orleans* this old guy up in jacksonville* mr dobson, at first atlantic bank and trust* elderly local businessmen* friends at stanley gibbons* the big boys (regards meyer's hedge index, something he generated that looked at how folk invest in stamp/coin, a signal to economic trends)* willy nucci, owns a hotel (other stuff)...a guy in the know,operates below the radar of the outfit guys, travis meets with him to get information on sprenger* kay, a waitress travis knows, she'd been elsewhere now working at the fountainbleau* saturfay evening post journalist* a huge old man* brownie...who is dead...guy who knew things* kay has twins in the second grade* a barman* a young lady with a newspaper/lauderdale/travis knows* a guard...at one of the hotels* a kinky girlfriend, of bunny golden, the man who did what sprenger does now* urchins...who try to get meyer to buy insurance, $5 a tire, while he waits as travis prowls the hotel lounges looking for information* veteranarian* rosa & vito grimaldi, owners of the now defunct "grimaldi's" a restaurant, a favorite, gone now because someone wanted the land it sat on, inspections, this that the other...in hollandale* a redcoat waiter (at the steakhouse)* jenny thurston, paints, has the west bank, another boat near travis's busted flush* sturdy young men, who come, then go, from jenny's place* sam taggert, nora gardino, a girl named skeeter, puss killian...all denizens of bahia mar, fort lauderdale* three people on duty there* an old man with hair like brillo, the colonel, stamp customer* a man came in and was greeted by name, mr sulzer* some women at the laundromat where travis does his dirty overdue laundry* a fat man on a rackety little trail bike (who almost ran travis down)* jerry lawson, deceased husband of jane lawson* jerry's folks* major general samuel horace lawson, jerry's old man, a character. he has three sons, his wife is bess* julio, a young cuban at the yacht club* a batch of kids...younger daughter of jane, her group, other gangs of girls* a boy mary alice had gone steady with for several years, tom, who was killed in a one-car accident* lawyer...there are a number of lawyers mentioned* a burly brown man with a shaved head (cop)* families with little children 'standing and staring w/god only knows what dim thoughts moving around in their empty skulls.' heh! the general's description of the lookey-loos* a fat young man with a guardsman mustache* two technicians* sergeant goodhead, cop* arn, another cop* captain mutty lamarr, a name travis provides goodhead, another cop in another place presumably* gene miller on the herald* jerry's wingman...jerry went down in a plane crash, pilot* hirsh's lawyer, who has power of attorney* moosejaw...miss a.a. moojah, maiden lady, previous employee of hirsh fedderman, she retired* a probation officer is mentioned/judy daughter of jane* would-be robbers, two of them, moosejaw clobbered them with a baseball bat, and this again, obviously, shows macdonald's misogynistic trend, the fabled sexism so many call him on. tell miss andry i called.* catalog prices, scott, minkus, stanley gibbons, sanabria...and these names could likely be included in the list below* two men stood at the dock, harry harris and dave davis, sent by sprenger and company to talk business with travis* davey hoople, 19-year-old master marine mechanic* mrs franck* sissie, works for frank spranger, a kind of secretary* a communications person (cop)* the general's wife's sister* alfred, the bell captain, at the contessa i think it was* elderly couples, florida, meyer takes a survey, 40 couples total* a little round cuban woman* at sprenger investments: one floor man was on the phone, another talking to an elderly couple, a third reading the wall street journal, a girl who seemed to be 50% thighs, another girl was having a doughnut and coffee, the 3rd girl stared at me from the reception desk* a tall frail old man, mr summer* an associate...a courier to west berlin/sprenger* helen, of helen's book nook* mr benedict...who has a collection/stamps* an old lady in vegas that travis saw/observed* people at the main desk harmony towers* fifteen old people were sitting in a circle* a swarthy young lady...mr lewis (they are learning spanish i think is how it went)* a woman hopped up* a.a. moojah's young grand-nephew* "miss dunn"...an identity for mary alice...a way of communicating intent to travis, "d" being one of several options* captain matty lamarr...travis/meyer friend* an unfriendly old man on a consolidated, a type of boat* his wife, with a voice like a bearing about to go* a friend gave mary alice a colt .25* spanish dance troupe* when she was 14, mary alice had a boyfriend who was 20, they stole things* foster home...mary alice* 20 girls in a cottage...at the school for girls, reform school* leader was a wino, so two butch girls ran things* one of the black girls* a marine operator* "george starch" a way of meyer communicating information to travis over marine radio* zippy little lady with bangs who used to do polaroid commercials on televison* ray mcdermitt, is who mary alice is married to, he is doing time, but has arranged with others so mary does not wander, ray is the middle brother* boo waswell, past, story to do with travis' adventures * an exiled master carpenter from cuba...who rigged some hiding places on the busted flush* harry harris has a wife mention* cathy kerr, friend of travis* davie kerr, her son* dr. ramirez, tends to travis* christine, sister of cathy, married to max, 6 children in all* daddy of cathy/christine* the man on the television* lois atkinson...prsumably from another story, friend of travis* a good mechanic...at candle keyreal people, famous, fictionally famous, the quality* god* zsa zsa* allende (chile)* john wayne* viet cong...barbary pirates* st francis* horatio alger* grissom (the astronaut)* hammurabi* robin hood* president of eastman kodak* jesus* doris day* nasa* i.m. pei* michael landon (actor, little joe on bonanza)* snow white* washington* columbus* saint louis* ben franklin* jesus* doris day* barbara barefoot ?* cher, sonny, gabby gabriele* armstrong...floors i think* quixote* admiral dewey* chris columbus, isabella* amerada hess ?* queen victoria* book of mormon, book of ether* jack lemmon, jack lord, george peppard, archie bunker, erma bombeck* burt reynolds
Among Travis's small circle of friends is Meyer, a brilliant economist who, like Travis, lives on the water. His modest floating domain is appropriately named “The John Maynard Keynes.” Meyer exudes a rabbinical wisdom, passionate outrage over injustice and, being Travis's friend, he is not afraid to pull up his shirt sleeves and get a bit dirty. That same loyalty provokes him to seek Travis's help on behalf of an old friend, Hirsh Fedderman, an elderly philatelist and dealer. Fedderman purchases stamps as investments for his clients. Each collection is kept in a bank lockbox which can only be accessed when the client and Fedderman are both present. To his horror, Fedderman has discovered that the collection of a client named Frank Sprenger has been replaced with a portfolio of inferior stock. Given the lockbox protocol, it is a complete mystery how the switch could have been accomplished. Fedderman only has two employees, one of whom would accompany him and the client to the bank to install each new purchase. However, the stamps and the album would never leave either Fedderman's or the client's sight. To make things worse, Sprenger is a dangerous man, a bookkeeper-enforcer-money launderer for the Miami mob franchises. The appreciation of the collectibles market is a given, and the skeptical reader might find this problematic. However, apparently during the 1970's at about the time this book was written, stamp collecting was being touted as a fool-proof and lucrative investment, at least before the bubble burst. (Thank you wikipedia. What would I do without you?). It is to his credit that MacDonald makes the technicalities of philately readable. MacDonald is also eloquent when observing the sad demise of his surroundings. It's one of the things I love about his writing. Of the barflies who have turned life into a habit Travis says: “They talked about the market and the elections. Maybe once upon a time it had been meaningful. They had probably met here when they had worked in the area, when the area had been important, when the hotel had been shining new. So now they came in from their retirement at this time of day, dressing for the part, to nurse a couple of eighty-five-cent drinks and find out who had died and who was dying. (p.21). He riffs on the décor of a pre-fab eatery: “We ate in one of the less offensive steak houses, at a table made from an imitation wooden hatch cover. They are sawing down forests, strapping thick green planks together with rusty iron, beating hell out of them with chains and crowbars, dipping them in a dark muddy stain, then covering the whole thing with indestructible transparent polymer about a quarter inch thick. Instant artifact.” Meyer expounds on a study he conducted of impoverished retirees: “They had all started to lay away some dollars for old-age income, but when the Social Security payments got bigger and the dollar started shrinking, they said the hell with it. Blow it all. Now their anger is directed outward, at society, because they don't dare look back and think of how pathetically vulnerable they were, how many thousands they blew on toys that broke before they were paid for, and how many thousands on the interest charges to buy those toys. They don't know who screwed them. They did what everybody else was doing.” MacDonald is writing epitaphs for a society that has lost it's way, and his pronouncementws resonate today with just as much power. Perhaps his most poignant outcry is over the islands ruined by oil companies, smelting, and strip mining. After that litany, the BP spill sounds merely like business as usual.(view spoiler)[MacDonald has difficulty creating female characters. He seems to realize this. In THE DEEP BLUE GOOD-BY, Dr. Ramirez's diagnosis of Lois's physical and mental damage ease the reader into her subsequent emotional fragility and sexual dependency. Here, MacDonald lavishes great attention on Mary Alice, one of Fedderman's two assistants. Yet, seems at a loss to get beyond descriptions about her size, and athleticism. She is initially resistant to Travis's charms, and later gives him a backstory that explains her avoidance of relationships. Yet, she suddenly does an about-face. Jules Verne's giant squid couldn't grab at Travis more insistently. Travis, as well, throws caution to the winds. His attraction to Mary Alice is inexplicable, but then, this is Travis McGee so no explanation will be forthcoming. Suddenly, poor Fedderman's problems recede into the background, although MacDonald does inject life into the plot with the murder of Fedderman's other assistant, Jane Lawson. MacDonald is conning the reader. Travis has slipped from sharp objectivity to unreliable narrator, seeing what he wants to see. All that sexual hunger is, well, the ruse. (hide spoiler)]
Do You like book The Scarlet Ruse (1972)?
Very difficult for young people these days. Or any days. In what golden epoch was being a teenager a constant joy? There has always been a generation gap. It is called twenty years. Too much talk about unresponsive government, irrelevant education. Maybe the real point is that young lives have no accepted focal point. The tribe gives no responsibilities, no earned privileges, no ceremonial place. In the family unit they do not fit into a gap between generations, because the generations are diffused. Maybe that is why they are scurrying pell-mell back to improvised tribal conditions, to communes. The schools have tried, in loco parentis, to fill a vacuum, condition the young on a fun-reward system. It has been a rotten try. The same vacuum spawns the rigid social order of Jesus freaks, another try at structure and meaning. The communes themselves are devices of the privileged, because if everybody went into communes, the communes would become impossible.tSo the kids float. They ram around, amble around, talk and dream, and rediscover al the more simplistic philosophical paradoxes. An the ones in the majority who make it (as apparently Miss Linda Lawson was making it) find some bottom within themselves. A place to stand. A meaning derived from fractionated nonsense. They are not a brighter generation than ever before. They have been exposed to more input, so much they have been unable to appraise and assimilate it but are able to turn it into immediate output, impressively glib and commercially sincere.tAnd the few that can't make it, like the younger daughter, exude the ripe odor of the unwashed as opposed to the animal tang of healthy sweat. Their tangled and musty locks make the shining tresses of the others repugnant to all those Neanderthal spooks who would hate and resent youngness no matter how it might come packaged. The lost ones, like Judy, get so far into the uppers and downers and the mind benders -- hardly ever knowing what they are taking, seeking only something in the blood that will bring the big rush, and warp the world -- that if told it would make a nice high, they would stuff a dead toad into their ear. The lost ones trade the clap germs back and forth until they cultivate strains as resistant to penicillin as were the Oriental brands of yore. (p. 63-64)tMeyer made one of his surveys of the elderly couples in the Fort Lauderdale area, the ones being squeezed between the cost of living and their Social Security. They were very bitter about it. They were very accusatory about it. Amurrica should give them the financial dignity they had earned. Meyer's survey was in depth, relating income over the working years to the pattern of spending. Meyer radiates compassion. He is easy to talk to. He ended his survey after forty couples chosen at random, because by then the pattern was all too clear.tHe said, "I'll put it all into appropriate and acceptable jargon later, Travis, but the essence of it is that all too many of them were screwed by consumer advertising. Spend, spend, spend. Live for today. So they lived out their lives up to their glottises in time payments. They blew it all on boats and trailers and outboard motors, binoculars, and hunting rifles and department-store high fashion. They lived life to the hilt, like the ads suggest. Not to the hilt of pleasure, but to the hilt of spending. They had bureau drawers full of movie cameras, closets full of record players and slide projectors. Buy the wall-to-wall carpeting. Buy the great big screen. Visit all the national parks in America. Funny thing. They had all started to lay away some dollars for old-age income, but when the Social Security payments got bigger and the dollar started shrinking, they said the hell with it. Blow it all. Now their anger is directed outward, at society, because they don't dare look back and think of how pathetically vulnerable they were, how many thousands they blew on toys that broke before they were paid for, and how many thousands on the the interest charges to buy those toys. They don't know who screwed them. They did what everybody else was doing. Look at the tabulation on my last question. 'If you had to do it over again, how much would you put aside each month, expressed as a percentage of income, and what would you give up?' Read the things they'd give up, my friend. It would break your heart." (p. 115-116)tYes indeed. I would have truly enjoyed showing her the islands. How the big aluminum plant and the oil refinery of Amerada Hess blacken the stinking skies over St. Croix. Maybe she'd like the San Juan Guyama and Ybucoa areas of Puerto Rico where Commonwealth Oil, Union Carbide, Phillips Petroleum, and Sun Oil have created another new industrial wasteland where the toxic wastes have killed the vegetation, where hot oil effluents are discharged into the sea and flow westward along the shoreline in a black roiling stench, killing all sea life. (p. 176)tHe tried to laugh, but his face twisted and broke, and he put his head down into his hands and sobbed. It is the gentle people who get torn up. They can cope. They can keep handling the horrors long after the rest of us fade out. But it marks them more deeply, more lastingly. This was role reversal at its most bitter. I knew what he had to have, and I wondered for a moment at my own hesitation. lIfe seems to be a series of attempts to break out of old patterns. Sometimes you can. I reached and touched him on the shoulder. (p. 215)
—Shuriu
Thanks to this one and Lawrence Block’s Keller series, I know more about philately then I ever thought I would.Travis McGee is coming off of one of his periodic retirements and looking for a new salvage gig in which he’ll try to recover items that people were scammed out of for half their value. His client this time is a stamp dealer named Hirsh who puts together collections for people looking to use them as investments. Hirsh had been working with Frank Sprenger who is well-connected to the kind of people you don’t want to double cross lest you find yourself sharing an oil drum with Jimmy Hoffa.Unfortunately, the dealer got a look at the collection he’s been buying for Sprenger during his last transaction, and someone swapped the rare stamps for junk despite the display book being kept in a locked safe deposit box that requires that both of them access it together. Their agreement leaves Hirsh on the hook to reimburse Frank and since this would bankrupt him he’s desperately trying to learn how it was done and who was responsible before Frank figures out that something is wrong. Suspects include Hirsh’s two assistants, and it also seems possible that Frank could have been running some elaborate con to get the stamps as well as clean Hirsh out.Travis also has other things on his mind since the Lauderdale city council has just passed a measure designed to make living on a house boat illegal so he has to decide whether he’ll become a landlubber or move his beloved Busted Flush to a new permanent berth. Since this is a Travis McGee book we’re talking about, there also has to be a lady for him to romance and his latest victim candidate is Hirsh’s assistant Mary Alice.I was having a fun time with this one through the first half of it as Travis tried to figure out how the stamps could have been switched as well as checking into Sprenger’s background. As always, half of what I like is McGee’s inner monologues about various aspects of the modern life of his time. Since the series was well into the 1970s by then, the sexism was toned down to a more tolerable level then many of the previous installments.But things go downhill in a hurry once the book shifts to the romance with Mary Alice, and McGee seems to develop a terminal case of the stupids. (view spoiler)[ For being a guy who lives by his wits and much has been made about his instincts for reading people, Travis comes across as a complete dumb ass in this one. He somehow falls for Mary Alice despite her being a sociopath, and he completely misreads what’s going on with Sprenger. MacDonald does a decent job of dropping some hints about Mary Alice’s true nature along the way, but once the realization is made, any hint of subtly or pretense is gone. She’s seems stupid and obvious after this point so it makes McGee seem incredibly gullible for not picking up on it sooner. (hide spoiler)]
—Kemper
Engaging, fun summer read. Meyer (the hairy economist philosopher) has an old friend (that is, the friend is an old man) who manages fancy stamp collections. An big book of expensive rare stamps being managed for a mob guy has been mysteriously replaced with a big book of worthless stamps. Trav takes the case, hooks up with an interesting chick, and figures it all out. It was written in '73 and I am sad at how far it seems we haven't come:"Meyer made one of his surveys of the elderly couple in the Fort Lauderdale area, the ones being squeezed between the cost of living and their Social Security. They were very bitter about it. They were very accusatory about it. Amurrica should give them the financial dignity they had earned."Meyer's analysis of the true cause of their dissatisfaction:"all too many of them were screwed by consumer advertising. Spend, spend, spend. Live for today. So they lived out their lives up to their glottis in time payments. They blew it all on boats and trailers and outboard motors, binoculars and hunting rifles and department store high fashion. They lived life to the hilt, as the ads suggest. Not to the hilt of pleasure, but to the hilt of spending."... "Now their anger is directed outward, at society, because they don't dare look back and think how pathetically vulnerable they were, how many thousands they blew on toys that broke before they were paid for, and how many thousands on the interest charges to buy those toys. They don't know who screwed them. They did what everybody else was doing."Over 30 years later and we still don't get it. Combined with this bit, I can completely relate to Trav's mood: "Suddenly I felt bleak, oddly depressed. It took a moment to realize that one of Meyer's recent lectures on international standards of living was all too well remembered.'...so divide everything into two hundred million equal parts. Everything in this country that is fabricated. Steel mills, speedboats, cross-country power lines, scalpels, watch bands, fish rods, ski poles, plywood, storage batteries, everything. Break it down into basic raw materials and then compute the power requirements and the fossil fuels needed to make everybody's share in this country. Know what happens if you apply that formula to all the peoples of all other other nations of the world?'You come up against a bleak fact, Travis. There is not enough material on and in the planet to ever give them what we're used to.'"
—JoAnna Spring
