atarbett's review
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
ncrabb's review against another edition
2.0
I’m not sure whether it’s entirely the book or whether I’ve read so many of the Travis McGee books that I’m perhaps burning out a little on them. This one had potential to be pretty exciting, but it didn’t work like that for me.
Some years before the major action of this book takes place, then-17-year-old Linda, nicknamed Pidge by her family and friends, stows away on McGee’s boat, fully intending to pleasure McGee with her apparently lithe and youthful body. McGee, however, was a friend of Pidge’s dad, and in a rare moment for him, he took the high road, gave little Miss Let-Me-Make-Your-Dreams-Come-True a blanket with which to cover herself, took the sobbing unfulfilled girl home to daddy, and wondered from then on whether he should have been more like his old self.
Several years and many women later, McGee is once again placed in Pidge’s life. This time, she has married, her dad is dead, and she’s quite convinced that her new hubby is trying to kill her to get at the vast amount of money left to her by her successful undersea treasure-hunting father.
Pidge and Travis meet in Hawaii, where she tells a bizarre story of female stow-aways and phantom laughter and conversations, all of which point to the idea that her life is indeed endangered.
Frankly, that’s pretty much the best part of the book. It just gets increasingly wobbly from there.
Some years before the major action of this book takes place, then-17-year-old Linda, nicknamed Pidge by her family and friends, stows away on McGee’s boat, fully intending to pleasure McGee with her apparently lithe and youthful body. McGee, however, was a friend of Pidge’s dad, and in a rare moment for him, he took the high road, gave little Miss Let-Me-Make-Your-Dreams-Come-True a blanket with which to cover herself, took the sobbing unfulfilled girl home to daddy, and wondered from then on whether he should have been more like his old self.
Several years and many women later, McGee is once again placed in Pidge’s life. This time, she has married, her dad is dead, and she’s quite convinced that her new hubby is trying to kill her to get at the vast amount of money left to her by her successful undersea treasure-hunting father.
Pidge and Travis meet in Hawaii, where she tells a bizarre story of female stow-aways and phantom laughter and conversations, all of which point to the idea that her life is indeed endangered.
Frankly, that’s pretty much the best part of the book. It just gets increasingly wobbly from there.
genej101's review against another edition
4.0
Not a happy ending for Travis this time, there's an element of sadness that flows through the entire book. It ended as it should though, but the way was unpleasantly familiar to far too many people. Nothing lasts forever, including love is its message. May well be true, but it's not a pleasant thought, nor true in a metaphysical sense - for me. Romantic love, yeah, that is often transitory. As Taylor Swift writes, "The greatest loves of all time, are over now." If true, that's a loss on a human scale of immense proportion. I left this book feeling sorry for Travis, first time ever.
darwin8u's review against another edition
3.0
"A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company."
- Gian Vincenzo Gravina, quoted in Turquoise Lament
It wound-up really well, but puttered a bit at the middle, and was predictable at the end. I think my misgivings about this book were structural (no major sexism, racism, or homophobia in this book). It had several fantastic quotes and asides and the treasure hunter/gold digger parallel could really have been magic. In the end, however, the girl-in-peril scenario just didn't really work. She was obnoxious and the whole routine of the chase and rescue was like an over-long aerial tram cable: it begins to sag in the middle.
I've been reading Ian Fleming's Bond series around the same time as MacDonald's McGee novels and I love and hate both series. There is just enough to keep me reading, and I TOTALLY get why they both sold well, but ye gads the 50s - 70s were not the most enlightened period of crime/espionage writing.
- Gian Vincenzo Gravina, quoted in Turquoise Lament
It wound-up really well, but puttered a bit at the middle, and was predictable at the end. I think my misgivings about this book were structural (no major sexism, racism, or homophobia in this book). It had several fantastic quotes and asides and the treasure hunter/gold digger parallel could really have been magic. In the end, however, the girl-in-peril scenario just didn't really work. She was obnoxious and the whole routine of the chase and rescue was like an over-long aerial tram cable: it begins to sag in the middle.
I've been reading Ian Fleming's Bond series around the same time as MacDonald's McGee novels and I love and hate both series. There is just enough to keep me reading, and I TOTALLY get why they both sold well, but ye gads the 50s - 70s were not the most enlightened period of crime/espionage writing.
gengelcox's review
3.0
Had Travis McGee been in a science fiction novel, we would have had books like The Philosophy of McGee, similar to The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, dedicated to the wit and wisdom of this, MacDonald's best known and best loved character. Perhaps it is for the best. While not quite given to epigrams as Robert Heinlein, MacDonald definitely had a consistent vision of who this latter day Don Quixote was. Long before Robert Parker investigated male angst in the Spenser books, MacDonald had mined the entire territory.
In The Turquoise Lament, McGee must face doubt, guilt, and faith as the grown daughter of a deceased salvage friend is afraid that her newlywed husband is attempting to kill her. Culminating in a fight scene with a cable car that today's Hollywood would go nuts for--in fact, that gets me to wondering why we have never seen McGee on film. Maybe we have, and I just don't know about it? Sure, some of the dialogue might not work on the screen, but the mystery, adventure, and spectacular fights would surely fit today's current vehicles for male stars. Today's directors would probably make a mish-mash of it, though; MacDonald probably better fits a director like Alfred Hitchcock than Paul Verhoeven or James Cameron.
In The Turquoise Lament, McGee must face doubt, guilt, and faith as the grown daughter of a deceased salvage friend is afraid that her newlywed husband is attempting to kill her. Culminating in a fight scene with a cable car that today's Hollywood would go nuts for--in fact, that gets me to wondering why we have never seen McGee on film. Maybe we have, and I just don't know about it? Sure, some of the dialogue might not work on the screen, but the mystery, adventure, and spectacular fights would surely fit today's current vehicles for male stars. Today's directors would probably make a mish-mash of it, though; MacDonald probably better fits a director like Alfred Hitchcock than Paul Verhoeven or James Cameron.
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