Travis McGee novels are all uniformly rather good; entertaining
narratives, jovial floridity, good-old-fashioned misogyny, guns, birds, boats
and booze. Sadly, when read one after the other, this means that such trivial
little things as plots get hard to differentiate from each other. My mistake
therefore has been to read these two contiguously with no other literary
diversion in between, as I can now no longer remember what happens in each. For
those who like that sort of thing, I will attempt a limited, non-spoiling plot
summary but, understandably, this may become confused and disorientating, so be
warned. One thing I will say before I begin such a fool’s errand is that contrary
to my opening statement, the previous Trav narrative I read, which may or may
not have been Dress
Her In Indigo, was disappointing, and these two novels represent a welcome
return to a more polished form of gruff and chivalric silliness.
Travis runs his big daft car off the road after nearly
killing a half-naked lady whose husband comes aboard his boat to shoot him for
stealing his wife from him even though she’s dead and a girl whose family are
inbred weirdoes but whose brother is a Canadian tennis, skiing and law prodigy
and also a psycho is impersonating her on a Caribbean island resort and bonking
a sailor who is no match for Trav’s wily masculinity. Somewhere here the hirsute
Meyer makes several appearances and gets bonked on the head / kidnapped before
someone gets tar poured on them and dumped in a sinkhole. There’re some overly
metaphorical sex scenes and Trav worries he’s losing his edge before realising a healthy
respect for death and the limitations of one’s body and mind contribute to
keeping one alive. Cue the drinking of Plymouth Gin.
There are several notable and perhaps laudable things about
the writing of John D MacDonald. Not least amongst them is his resistance to foul
language – nary an S or F word to be found, and definitely no C-bombs – but also
his reluctance to mention Vietnam, something that was probably at the forefront
on the public consciousness at the time of writing (that and Capitalism). Ecological concerns also get an occasional
look-in, with musings on the consequences of the human stain. Violence is
purely technical (how to chop someone’s Adam’s apple, how best to roll to avoid
a left-handed shooter etc.) or described for the horrific brutality (including rare
sexual violence but also casual slaps of the missus to keep her in line). And
it’s all done with such rare elegance of language that it only ever feels dated
when he overlooks logging-in to Facebook to check incriminating photographs or
how someone’s identity holds up under scrutiny. I may be derisive in tone and content,
but I do genuinely enjoy his novels, so much so that I dismantled a wedding
breakfast centre-piece to steal a hard-back version of one of his 1959 hard-boiled
novels A Deadly Welcome. If you’re
after a better endorsement, consider this, from Kurt Vonnegut Jnr (who died
this day – or maybe yesterday – back in 2007):
“To diggers a thousand years
from now . . . the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order
of the tomb of Tutankhamen.”
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