Disappointing.
That pretty much sums up my opinion of the third Travis McGee
outing. I'm not sure what MacDonald was going for here. Was
it getting McGee out of Florida? (Wait. It's only the third
book, and the last one took place in New York City.) Was this
supposed to be a Western? What?
All I know is that I liked the first two McGees. Well-paced,
suspenseful, and fun. I read this one and kept wanting to go
back to the motel and hang in the bar instead of prowling all
over Esmerelda County, Nevada, with McGee. The book took 200
pages to get interesting, and by then it was painful to
finish. In fact, I'll go as far as to say if it weren't by
John MacDonald, I'd have thrown the book across the room
after about three chapters.
One thing I found off-putting was McGee's attitude towards
women. When reading McGee, one accepts that he's a tad
condeescending toward women, and in the first two books, some
of them push back. In this one, McGee is put next to
characters even more brazenly sexist than he is, and
MacDonald tries to use this to make McGee look more noble.
Doesn't work. He just comes off as slightly less an asshole
than the other men around him. The Mexicans are cardboard
cutouts, and so are the rich men of Esmerelda County. When
Jass dies 2/3 of the way through the book, I thought, "You
mean I still have about 90 pages left?"
I don't expect groundbreaking from the Travis McGee series,
but I ought to have fun reading it. I didn't with this one.
What should have been a fast read took me over a week to
finish. Well, maybe my last four reads set the bar too high.
Is it possible that, after reading THE MALTESE FALCON, a
Chandler, a Ross Mac, and a classic Spillane, that I expected
more? I doubt it. I know what JDM can do, and he didn't do it
here. Copping and rewriting the ending to NIGHTMARE IN PINK
for this one didn't help.
Jim Winter
http://www.jamesrwinter.com
http://jamesrwinter.blogspot.com
winter-newsletter-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 16 Dec 2004 EST