[ZMG]⋙ PDF Free The Turquoise Lament A Travis McGee Novel edition by John D MacDonald Lee Child Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks

The Turquoise Lament A Travis McGee Novel edition by John D MacDonald Lee Child Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks

Download As PDF : The Turquoise Lament A Travis McGee Novel edition by John D MacDonald Lee Child Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks

The Turquoise Lament A Travis McGee Novel edition by John D MacDonald Lee Child Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks

I fell in love with the Travis McGee series when I was a kid, reading them as they came out. Lost my early copies as I moved around. Later in life I replaced and reread them, kept moving and left them behind again at another place. As an old man a few years ago I decided to buy the series on my Kindle as a Christmas treat for myself. Starting at the beginning with #1(1964), The Deep Blue Goodbye I was underwhelmed and by the time I was part way through #6(1965), Bright Orange for the Shroud I found myself put off by how harshly MacDonald treated his minor characters,and by the way he criticized everything from vegetarians to yoga(disclaimer-I'm partial to both). I stopped reading the series in the middle of the book. Bored one day a few years later I tried the last McGee book MacDonald wrote #21(1985), The Lonely Silver Rain and found MacDonald was just as satisfying but less critical or maybe it was just me who had grown up. Then I tried #18(1979), The Green Ripper and it too showed a less judgmental MacDonald. Deciding that he had changed somewhere along the way I decided working my way backwards would be the safest bet and tried # 16(1975), The Dreadful Lemon Sky,and then The Turquoise Lament/#15(1973) and again I found both to be excellent reads. John D. MacDonald has always been a consummate writer and in his later years before he died in 1986 he seemed to have worked through enough of his demons that he treated the world and his characters with more compassion. May we all do the same.


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The Turquoise Lament A Travis McGee Novel edition by John D MacDonald Lee Child Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks Reviews

Travis McGee is an unlicensed investigator who recovers stolen property, by illegal means if necessary.  His occupation is suitable for a self-confessed adrenaline junkie with an aversion to conformity.  His personal life is mainly hormone-directed, although he does have standards.  He disdains prostitutes and murder accomplices.  In several instances (earlier in the book series), he has seriously considered a long-term relationship.  These women tend to be intelligent professionals of good character, who are largely self-sufficient, except they all need his special brand of bedroom therapy to enrich their lives and become more complete human beings.  McGee is a likable, understandable, sympathetic character, aside from his pervasive promiscuity, which can be overlooked because it’s boosting book sales. 

In the Turquoise story, McGee deviates from his established pattern.  He becomes deeply involved with a woman whose history includes emotional instability, a longstanding obsession with him, and an incident in which she tried to accuse him of rape.  What does he see in her?  He addresses this issue semi-seriously, listing her wealth, youth, and ability to cook.  If this relationship turned out badly, would we sympathize with the poor fellow, or wonder what else he could have expected?  We are given no reason to care about this woman, which undercuts the story's suspense, but not its poetic imagery.  From a height on an exotic island, McGee scans the horizon tensely, day after day, for any sign of the ship bearing his loved one -- a touching gender role reversal. 

JDM’s stories are imaginative, original, and laced with informative detail.  His writing style is uniquely delightful.  He could describe grass growing or paint drying and make it thoroughly entertaining.  The stories' weakest element is plot structure.  Among other issues, the motives of principal characters are sometimes obscure or implausible, and the hero/villain conflict is sometimes resolved by McGee getting lucky.  In the Turquoise story, McGee’s emotional attachment to this particular woman is out of character.  It's an implausible motive for getting into a life-threatening situation, and the story's suspense level suffers for it.  Even so, I have not yet picked up a McGee story, including this one, that was easy to put down.  Fifteen and counting. 
I've become increasingly turned off by Lee Child's Jack Reacher series, which I loved for a long time, but which seem increasingly formulaic. (The latest one, "Make Me," is so extreme in its revelation of evil that I left it feeling more disgusted than horrified.) And so I recently returned to a much older writer in a similar vein - John D. Macdonald of the Travis McGee books. I was not surprised that the highly appreciative introduction to the re-issued series was written by none other than Child, whose Reacher is an update of McGee in masculine sex appeal, ingenious resourcefulness, and alienation from "normal" society. In re-reading of the McGees, one difference between the two heroes jumps out. Reacher is an outsider with virtually no personal connections other than the obligatory roll-in-the-hay with a smart young lady whom he happens to encounter on one of his nomadic bus trips through the American wasteland. McGee, on the other hand, is an outsider with an almost aching need to repair and maintain connections that meant and continue to mean a great deal to him. Most of the people in peril he "salvages" are someone he used to know or someone close to the person he used to know.. He would g be lost without the intellectual companionship of Meyer, the world-class economist who is his occasional partner in detection. And of course there is his beloved houseboat, the Busted Flush, well stocked with blue-chip jazz recordings and Plymouth gin. Reading Reacher, I increasingly feel his remoteness, his unreality as a character. Returning to McGee, I am back in the presence of an old, very good friend, crotchets and all. "The Turquoise Lament" is McGee at his most personal, most vulnerable. And he remains very good company.

Most of the people he "salvages" have had a place in his past and a claim on his feelings. He would be lost without the intellectual, gruff companionship of Meyer, the world-class economist who is his frequent partner in crime-solving. And of course there is his beloved houseboat, the Busted Flush, impeccably maintained and stocked with blue-chip jazz recordings and Plymouth gin. Unlike Reacher's adventures, McGee's are intimate affairs, ripe with nostalgia and self-doubt, long, probing conversations, prickly observations about the "little things" about the modern world that bug him, bittersweet rather than triumphant in their final flavor. You don't marvel at McGee's fearlessness the way you do at Reacher's. You worry about his fragility, not just physical but mental. With ever new Reacher book, I feel his increasing remoteness as a character. Going back to the McGee books, to their different time and place in the 1960s and '70s, I feel I a re-encountering an old, very dear friend. "The Turquoise Lament" is McGee at his most personal and his company is better than ever.
I fell in love with the Travis McGee series when I was a kid, reading them as they came out. Lost my early copies as I moved around. Later in life I replaced and reread them, kept moving and left them behind again at another place. As an old man a few years ago I decided to buy the series on my as a Christmas treat for myself. Starting at the beginning with #1(1964), The Deep Blue Goodbye I was underwhelmed and by the time I was part way through #6(1965), Bright Orange for the Shroud I found myself put off by how harshly MacDonald treated his minor characters,and by the way he criticized everything from vegetarians to yoga(disclaimer-I'm partial to both). I stopped reading the series in the middle of the book. Bored one day a few years later I tried the last McGee book MacDonald wrote #21(1985), The Lonely Silver Rain and found MacDonald was just as satisfying but less critical or maybe it was just me who had grown up. Then I tried #18(1979), The Green Ripper and it too showed a less judgmental MacDonald. Deciding that he had changed somewhere along the way I decided working my way backwards would be the safest bet and tried # 16(1975), The Dreadful Lemon Sky,and then The Turquoise Lament/#15(1973) and again I found both to be excellent reads. John D. MacDonald has always been a consummate writer and in his later years before he died in 1986 he seemed to have worked through enough of his demons that he treated the world and his characters with more compassion. May we all do the same.