Scan barcode
mwgant's review against another edition
3.0
This one hasn't aged as well. Frigid, undersexed females that need to be "cured" is painful. But, it's from the 1960's so John D. gets a partial pass. Still surprises me how prescient JDM was about the environment and the damage humans will do; a lot of good passages on this subject.
thebeardedpoet's review
4.0
If you love a loquacious narrator, one who loves to wax philosophical about human nature, especially human folly, one who never misses an opportunity to offer a tangent of observation or thought (especially about whether to sex or not to sex), Travis McGee is for you, as is One Fearful Yellow Eye! Travis McGee is one interesting package: beach bum, anachronism, amateur sex therapist, amateur philosopher, automotive restoration hobbyist, art connoisseur, food connoisseur, and off-the-books salvage professional. It is McGee's voice that makes this series of books.
This particular story is exciting and moves along well, but the nature of McGee requires detours and soliloquies which take the pace down a notch at times. Also when the evil caper behind all the problems is revealed, it is a doozy--maybe just a little too bonkers for plausibility, but by that point the peril and resolution has carried you to an endpoint. Just don't sit there and think about it too much after the last couple pages.
It is all worth it for the prose which sings like poetry at times. Someone could use this book do a PhD on sentence length variation. Definitely one of the most poetic and rhetorically vigorous works of fiction I've ever read.
This particular story is exciting and moves along well, but the nature of McGee requires detours and soliloquies which take the pace down a notch at times. Also when the evil caper behind all the problems is revealed, it is a doozy--maybe just a little too bonkers for plausibility, but by that point the peril and resolution has carried you to an endpoint. Just don't sit there and think about it too much after the last couple pages.
It is all worth it for the prose which sings like poetry at times. Someone could use this book do a PhD on sentence length variation. Definitely one of the most poetic and rhetorically vigorous works of fiction I've ever read.
johnnyb1954's review against another edition
2.0
I haven't read a Travis McGee story in 30 years and this wasn't the one to jump back in with. Maybe they were all like this and I had a different perspective before.
McGee is described in this book as a savior of wounded birds, meaning women in trouble. A woman that McGee is getting involved with is raped in the story. He describes his feelings by comparing it to the time he and his brother built this sports car and then it was damaged in an accident. Although it was repaired, it was never the same. Yeah, that's what women are like. Oh, sorry, spoiler alert, but, really, don't read this book.
One of the characters in the story is gay. So John D. macDonald takes this opportunity to give his (or McGee's) view on gay men. He tolerates them. It's like the negroes: some men hate them because they fear they are really one of them. You kind of have to read this two page exposition to get it, but, really, don't bother.
It comes down to McGee (MacDonald), as an enlightened white male, is superior to gays, women, blacks, rednecks, but he understands them and condescendingly is willing to coexist with the. Especially women, because sex.
The mystery was fine and well written which is why this is 2 stars instead of none.
McGee is described in this book as a savior of wounded birds, meaning women in trouble. A woman that McGee is getting involved with is raped in the story. He describes his feelings by comparing it to the time he and his brother built this sports car and then it was damaged in an accident. Although it was repaired, it was never the same. Yeah, that's what women are like. Oh, sorry, spoiler alert, but, really, don't read this book.
One of the characters in the story is gay. So John D. macDonald takes this opportunity to give his (or McGee's) view on gay men. He tolerates them. It's like the negroes: some men hate them because they fear they are really one of them. You kind of have to read this two page exposition to get it, but, really, don't bother.
It comes down to McGee (MacDonald), as an enlightened white male, is superior to gays, women, blacks, rednecks, but he understands them and condescendingly is willing to coexist with the. Especially women, because sex.
The mystery was fine and well written which is why this is 2 stars instead of none.
cafo6's review against another edition
5.0
This might be the saddest ending yet. :( I would caution modern readers to imagine the times, when reading any of these books. Sometimes the author/Travis sounds utterly racist or misogynistic- but I don’t find malice. Only a wry observation, often misunderstanding what he saw and not necessarily knowing what to make of it.
markfeltskog's review against another edition
I do understand that this book was published in 1966. Nonetheless, even for me, a reader mostly willing to overlook such things, the sexism in this novel is just too rank.
lrconnol's review against another edition
5.0
Travis McGee is always a delight to read. An especially scathing description of Chicago politics and at one point the wind was ruffling the 4 tons of paper on the Chicago streets.
genej101's review against another edition
4.0
One of John's good ones. This one different only in that Travis "may" have met his forever girl, but she wasn't up for it. Good plotting as always.
yaj's review against another edition
4.0
A little dated but still an intriguing mystery with interesting characters.
darwin8u's review against another edition
3.0
"A man will let his money be taken only when the alternative is something he cannot endure."
- John D. MacDonald, One Fearful Yellow Eye
McGee does Chicago. I liked it, but didn't love it. Sometimes MacDonald takes McGee away from Florida and it seems to almost work, but I still think I prefer McGee on a boat to McGee in Chicago, in the snow. As a favor to an old flame, McGee goes to Chicago because her ex-husband's estate has been emptied and the relatives all think she did it. McGee looks into the hows and whys of the money disappearing. McGee's views (and I'd presume to a bit MacDonald's) on homosexuals and Blacks appear in this novel and they are nearly there, but only reach the uncanny valley of sensitivity towards other groups:
"I'm always skeptical of the male who makes a big public deal about how he hates fairies, how they turn his stomach, how he'd like to beat the hell out of them. The queens are certainly distasteful, but the average homosexual in the visual and performing arts is usually a human being a little bit brighter and more perceptive than most."
I have to remind myself that this was published in 1966. He is growing. Language like that was seen as progressive in the 60s, in certain circles. Hell, language like that might sound progressive in Texas, Idaho, or Arizona in certain circles now. I seem to always find areas where MacDonald nearly writes a perfect novel, but a couple things just block it for me. He is one of those writers I keep coming back from and keep ending up just a bit frustrated (and not just because I keep wanting to enroll him in sensitivty training classes). His books have the potential for real genius and the more I read the more I see this potential. Individually, however, this book doesn't get close.
- John D. MacDonald, One Fearful Yellow Eye
McGee does Chicago. I liked it, but didn't love it. Sometimes MacDonald takes McGee away from Florida and it seems to almost work, but I still think I prefer McGee on a boat to McGee in Chicago, in the snow. As a favor to an old flame, McGee goes to Chicago because her ex-husband's estate has been emptied and the relatives all think she did it. McGee looks into the hows and whys of the money disappearing. McGee's views (and I'd presume to a bit MacDonald's) on homosexuals and Blacks appear in this novel and they are nearly there, but only reach the uncanny valley of sensitivity towards other groups:
"I'm always skeptical of the male who makes a big public deal about how he hates fairies, how they turn his stomach, how he'd like to beat the hell out of them. The queens are certainly distasteful, but the average homosexual in the visual and performing arts is usually a human being a little bit brighter and more perceptive than most."
I have to remind myself that this was published in 1966. He is growing. Language like that was seen as progressive in the 60s, in certain circles. Hell, language like that might sound progressive in Texas, Idaho, or Arizona in certain circles now. I seem to always find areas where MacDonald nearly writes a perfect novel, but a couple things just block it for me. He is one of those writers I keep coming back from and keep ending up just a bit frustrated (and not just because I keep wanting to enroll him in sensitivty training classes). His books have the potential for real genius and the more I read the more I see this potential. Individually, however, this book doesn't get close.
adiamond's review
5.0
Published in 1966, One Fearful Yellow Eye is the eighth book in John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series. This one takes place mostly in Chicago, where McGee has travelled to help an old friend. Gloria “Glory” Doyle was one those “broken birds” McGee had taken in and for a period of healing after her life had gone wrong. Her happily-ever-after came in the form of marriage to the good and caring Dr. Fortner Geis.
This story opens with a call from Glory. It seems someone had been extorting the late Dr. Geis in the final year of his life, draining his savings bit by bit until there was nothing left of the substantial estate his family had expected him to pass on. Dr. Geis’ children from his first marriage, Heidi and Roger, despise Glory for marrying their father, an older widower, just three years before his death. They see her as the gold digger who stole all their money, and she wants to clear her name.
So McGee flies to Chicago in December to help his old friend, and to get a crack at some of the $600,000 she’s trying to recover. As with the other McGee novels, many of the most interesting parts of the book come from the protagonist’s observations of the world around him.
“Statistically,” McGee says of Chicago, “it is probably the one city in the world where the most people have been killed in arguments over professional athletes.”
Standing on the windy shore of Lake Michigan in the December gloom, he observes:
This book has the usual McGee ingredients: a woman (or two) in distress, at least one of whom is a love interest, plenty of mystery, plenty of suspects, and a healthy dose of violence and suspense.
This one delves into family secrets, like a Ross MacDonald novel, to uncover how the contemporary crime under investigation has its roots deep in the past. And like a Ross MacDonald novel, it includes at least one major twist after you think you have it all figured out. I won’t give away any spoilers, but I do recommend the book for the richness of MacDonald’s prose and his expert storytelling.
This book is also interesting as a bit of archeology, portraying a past that is, on the one hand, outdated and gone, and on the other, a vivid prototype of the world we’re living in now.
Among the “outdated and gone” is the book’s portrayal of acceptable gender relations. All young women are sex objects in McGee’s world, and neither the men nor the women make any bones about it. The mid-sixties was the height of the sexual revolution brought about by the pill, when women were, perhaps for the first time in American history, as free as men to sleep with whomever they pleased. General attitudes toward sex were pretty open. People wanted to explore, and they did.
Still, I wonder sometimes about McGee’s constant sexualization of women. Was it the norm then? The acceptable norm? Or was McGee simply the flip-side of the female fantasy portrayed in romance novels, where the men are the objects of desire and are viewed by the women first and foremost as potential mates?
All fiction is fantasy to some extent, and in fiction intended as entertainment, the protagonist is usually a projection of who the reader wants to be. I know plenty of guys whose fantasy life would look just like Travis McGee’s. Live on a boat, drink beer all day, work when you feel like it, beat up bad guys, be the hero, and have women everywhere express their gratitude and admiration in bed. That beats the hell out of nine-to-five.
Among McGee’s “prototype” observations are his notes on the physical state of mid-sixties America. This is his description of the city on his arrival:
McGee and his author show a deep understanding of human psychology, as well an empathy and compassion for crime’s victims that is often either missing or shallowly portrayed in contemporary thrillers. If you’re looking for a well-written mystery with depth and interesting characters, this is it.
This story opens with a call from Glory. It seems someone had been extorting the late Dr. Geis in the final year of his life, draining his savings bit by bit until there was nothing left of the substantial estate his family had expected him to pass on. Dr. Geis’ children from his first marriage, Heidi and Roger, despise Glory for marrying their father, an older widower, just three years before his death. They see her as the gold digger who stole all their money, and she wants to clear her name.
So McGee flies to Chicago in December to help his old friend, and to get a crack at some of the $600,000 she’s trying to recover. As with the other McGee novels, many of the most interesting parts of the book come from the protagonist’s observations of the world around him.
“Statistically,” McGee says of Chicago, “it is probably the one city in the world where the most people have been killed in arguments over professional athletes.”
Standing on the windy shore of Lake Michigan in the December gloom, he observes:
There was no color in the world. Grey sand, gray water, grey beach, grey sky. I was trapped in one of those arty salon photographs of nature in the raw, the kind retired colonels enter in photography contests.
This book has the usual McGee ingredients: a woman (or two) in distress, at least one of whom is a love interest, plenty of mystery, plenty of suspects, and a healthy dose of violence and suspense.
This one delves into family secrets, like a Ross MacDonald novel, to uncover how the contemporary crime under investigation has its roots deep in the past. And like a Ross MacDonald novel, it includes at least one major twist after you think you have it all figured out. I won’t give away any spoilers, but I do recommend the book for the richness of MacDonald’s prose and his expert storytelling.
This book is also interesting as a bit of archeology, portraying a past that is, on the one hand, outdated and gone, and on the other, a vivid prototype of the world we’re living in now.
Among the “outdated and gone” is the book’s portrayal of acceptable gender relations. All young women are sex objects in McGee’s world, and neither the men nor the women make any bones about it. The mid-sixties was the height of the sexual revolution brought about by the pill, when women were, perhaps for the first time in American history, as free as men to sleep with whomever they pleased. General attitudes toward sex were pretty open. People wanted to explore, and they did.
Still, I wonder sometimes about McGee’s constant sexualization of women. Was it the norm then? The acceptable norm? Or was McGee simply the flip-side of the female fantasy portrayed in romance novels, where the men are the objects of desire and are viewed by the women first and foremost as potential mates?
All fiction is fantasy to some extent, and in fiction intended as entertainment, the protagonist is usually a projection of who the reader wants to be. I know plenty of guys whose fantasy life would look just like Travis McGee’s. Live on a boat, drink beer all day, work when you feel like it, beat up bad guys, be the hero, and have women everywhere express their gratitude and admiration in bed. That beats the hell out of nine-to-five.
Among McGee’s “prototype” observations are his notes on the physical state of mid-sixties America. This is his description of the city on his arrival:
I could smell a sourness in the wind. I remembered that it blew across a dying lake. For a hundred years the cities had dumped their wastes and corruptions and acids into it, and now suddenly everyone was aghast that it should have the impertinence to start dying like Lake Erie. The ecology was broken, the renewing forces at last overwhelmed. Now the politicians were making the brave sounds the worried people wanted to hear.
Now they were taking half-measures. Scientists said that only with total effort might the process be slowed, halted, reversed. But total effort, of course, would raise havoc with the supposedly God-given right of the thousand lakeshore corporations to keep costs down by running their poisons into the lake.
McGee and his author show a deep understanding of human psychology, as well an empathy and compassion for crime’s victims that is often either missing or shallowly portrayed in contemporary thrillers. If you’re looking for a well-written mystery with depth and interesting characters, this is it.
More...