Felt predictable with weak characters; also Our Hero does some pretty unheroic things in order to fix a problem he created himself. Not one of the better stories in this series. ( )

“Remember, there is a very cold and strange entity that hides inside Howie Brindle. It is the imposter. He is the stage effect.” — Meyer to McGee


It’s early December as this unusual Travis McGee novel begins. Whereas most of the McGee novels have mystery and suspense laced with resonating observations about life and society, with MacDonald casting a cloud on the sunshine of Florida with his insightful pondering of the misled, this one has those observations and insights front and center, with the mystery and suspense the underscore. While it makes this an atypical Travis McGee novel in some ways, it does not make it a bad one. It is in fact, a very good read, with many worthwhile moments. It’s not surprising that it’s one of the books in the series that he dedicated to his wife, Dorothy.

Coming just before the excellent Dreadful Lemon Sky, this was the first Travis McGee published in hardback, however, and just for a moment, perhaps less than a moment, MacDonald blinked. There is no way to give an accurate portrayal of a book so misrepresented at times without getting into great detail, so if you have a problem with basic plot spoilers for a book that’s been around for almost fifty years, you might want to stop reading here.

MacDonald was at heart a pulp writer — elevated so high most don’t recognize it as such, but a pulp writer nonetheless. He realized his readers were paperback readers, and knowing this one would be marketed toward people who might not have read a Travis McGee before, you can almost feel him taking the pulp edges off McGee, softening his hero just a tad to make him a bit more vulnerable — and fallible. The basic plot of a likable, affable sociopath who fools both McGee and Meyer would be used again — and in a more resonating way — in MacDonald’s next to last Travis McGee novel, Cinnamon Skin.

Each entry in any great series has its own atmosphere and value, however, and Turquoise Lament stands alone quite nicely. While Cinnamon Skin is a near masterpiece, The Turquoise Lament is very, very good when you don’t compare the two — or pit it against more stellar entries in the series. At MacDonald’s level, it is a matter of mere degrees between good and memorable. We are, after all, talking about one of the greatest series in American fiction, lauded by one great noteworthy writer after another. Over two decades, Travis McGee became a household name because readers couldn’t wait to get their hands on the next novel. This one is a solid four stars, as opposed to the solid five for Cinnamon Skin. That is all.

It begins in lovely Hawaii during early December. With great economy MacDonald places us there, and we’re soon hip to why taxi fares are so outrageous in Honolulu. McGee has made the trip from Florida at the request of Pidge Brindle, and the Travis McGee devotee can already sense this one is going to be a bit different from the others. McGee remembers how lovely Pidge was at seventeen, stowing aboard his boat to offer herself to him. Not the lech some over the years have misleadingly portrayed MacDonald’s hero as, McGee of course emphatically declines, taking Pidge back to her father, Ted. MacDonald, however, understood the wistfulness of what might have been, that twinge of regret every man feels at perhaps passing up something wonderful — even when it’s the right thing to do. There is nothing harder to resist than someone completely in love with you. Pidge is definitely no longer seventeen, however, and she is just as lovely. But she’s also an emotional mess. Whether the mess is real, or imagined, is for McGee to figure out.

A year ago, Pidge married Howie Brindle, a big, uncomplicated and easygoing giant who may not be the brightest bulb in the cupboard, but works hard and is very likable. Pidge’s almost neurotic story doesn’t jibe with anything he knows about Howie. Nor does it jibe with the evidence, which includes photographs. Though McGee cares about her, he needs to get the lay of the land, to discover if something diabolical is going on, or whether Pidge is having issues. So he talks to Howie and gets his version. With readers’ sympathy firmly in Pidge’s court, in a brilliantly written scene, we meet Howie, and begin to have the same doubts as McGee:

“He let go and spun away. His voice had broken. He started walking slowly back out the jetty toward the Trepid. It was a listless and dejected walk. A big dumpy giant, sad in the Christmas-coming sunshine.” — McGee describing the heartbroken and confused Howie.

But if Howie isn’t trying to kill Pidge, and there wasn’t another woman hiding on the boat while they were at sea — and all evidence suggests he isn’t, and there wasn’t — what’s going on with Pidge? Is she cracking up? So McGee drinks and talks to her, and they drink and talk some more, until finally, Pidge breaks down. Everything is psychologically sound in what transpires next. McGee doesn’t plant ideas, it is Pidge who realizes she doesn’t love Howie, no matter how much she wants to, and she’s created this elaborate ruse to explain why. This of course leads to an intimacy not planned by McGee, but firmly orchestrated by Pidge. As she tells McGee, explaining how it took her three hours to work up courage for her planned seduction: “You never had a chance, McGee.” And she’s right. It’s impossible for McGee to turn her down now, and there’s really no reason to:

“That and other memories of her were strangely merged with the sweet and immediate realities of her, the here-and-nowness of her, so that I seemed to live in the past and the present all at once. — She was a temptation out of the past, served up on some kind of eternal lazy Susan so that it had come by once again, and this time we had taken it.”

Later, Pidge explains:

“It’s too scary. I can’t go through all that again. Not ever. So there’s just one thing that would keep me from going back to him. And we just finished that one thing, and it was really beautiful. I wanted to do it with you a thousand years ago and you wouldn’t. You were pretty stuffy about it.”

Somewhere along the way, however, what might have been becomes what is:

“There may be better ways of spending the middle part of a Friday in Hawaii or anywhere else. If so, I find it very hard to think of any. It made a fine Friday. And Saturday. And Sunday.” — McGee in his thoughts

Much later, after Meyer collapses and is in the hospital, and after a couple of suicides by lonely friends, McGee ponders his future:

“Would I, Travis McGee, bring thee, Linda Lewellen Brindle, aboard this houseboat to live herein and hereon, with me, happily, so long as we shall all remain afloat?”

But before Meyer makes McGee think long and hard about his own mortality, McGee has to tell Howie that Pidge doesn’t want to be with him:

“He looked down. I thought it was a snort of sour laughter, and then realized it was a sob. I saw tears run down his round ruddy cheek. I felt like a coconspirator in a very rotten plan. This was a very simple decent guy. So like a coward, I tiptoed offstage.”

For a while, McGee goes through women, trying to shake off Pidge, but he can’t. Soon McGee realizes that he loves Pidge, then he gets her letter. Here is MacDonald the writer at his absolute best. Written from Pidge’s viewpoint, he perfectly captures her female voice, her thoughts and feelings, her excitement about the future she plans with McGee. It goes on for four pages, and will ring absolutely true to any man who has ever received a love letter. It’s a terrific piece of writing that offsets a later pretentious flourish when MacDonald has McGee interrogate himself during a mock trial. Also offsetting it is an insightful rumination on modern arrogance in regard to ancient civilizations. The mock trial in McGee's head is just a minor blip on the radar.

It’s Meyer who, when he begins recovering, realizes exactly what McGee's running from, and points him in the right direction. As McGee finally admits to his best friend, and one of the great sidekicks in mystery fiction:

“I keep thinking that other people have friends, and they talk about ball games and the weather and laugh a lot. What have I got? Ann Landers.”

Sounds like a great romance, doesn’t it? Well, finally we get to the Travis McGee part of the novel with which we’re more familiar. There is sunken treasure, and a lot of money left to Pidge by her father, Ted. There’s a guy named Collier, some blackmail, and Pidge somewhere out there on the big blue ocean with Howie Brindle, making one last trip to sell a boat before she returns to be McGee’s love. Then McGee has noticed something off in the photos that he needs to have an expert look at. It gives McGee a chill when he realizes he’s read it all wrong. This is the one where McGee almost buries someone alive. But mostly he just backtracks Howie, which reveals a very startling picture:

“Remember, there is a very cold and strange entity that hides inside Howie Brindle. It is the imposter. He is the stage effect.” — “An almost casual impulse. Irritation plus opportunity plus slyness, plus a total absence of human warmth and feeling.” — Meyer

It is also Meyer's belief that Pidge can stay alive longer at sea because of what transpired in Honolulu; simply because she believes she imagined it all the first time out, and Howie will not feel the impulse quite so quickly. With no hope of finding her on the water — MacDonald makes it startlingly clear just how difficult it is to locate a boat on the open sea — all McGee can do is wait for the boat in American Samoa. It gives McGee a chance to make observations about that part of the world which ring very true.

What finally transpires is violent and exciting, and leads to a true reversal of roles, and a bittersweet ending. The mystery and suspense is the underscore here, the soft strings rather than the driving horns. Had a reader never picked up a McGee book, this would seem marvelous. Having read them all many times over the decades, it’s only a good, solid entry where McGee was written a bit softer, the broad shoulders rounded in McGee’s version of a mid-life crisis. A great ending makes up for a lot, but this one is best enjoyed by those who love the ongoing commentary about society and the observations about living, and humanity. A book certainly misunderstood and sometimes misrepresented. A solid four stars as a McGee novel.

“The blackness was there in Howie Brindle, and then it was gone.” — McGee ( )

“Gian Gravina? ‘A bore is a person who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.’ ”
― John D. MacDonald, The Turquoise Lament: A Travis McGee Novel

I found this book to be..lamentful.

I should start by saying I have never before read a Travis McGee novel. This was my first one. I am not sure if I will read more. Perhaps I will but I sure did enjoy this book.

Travis McGee is a detective who lives on a houseboat. He receives a call from the daughter of an old friend of his who is positive her husband has bad intentions and is trying to kill her.

It is worth noting that this lady always harbored romantic feelings for Travis even though nothing happened.

Travis takes on the case and soon convinces himself that she was overreacting. But once off the case, he has a realization. Could this woman have been right? And is she in danger even now?

SPOILERS:

This book was really good. The lady..whose name is Pidge..and Travis of coarse begin an affair. So now his heart is invested in the outcome too.

I love how the use of the ocean is used so skillfully in the novel., with even the title being an homage to water. Being an ocean lover myself I found that aspect deeply compelling. I was less interested in the mystery and more interested in the romance. The ending and what becomes of the love between these two was not something I expected.

Being that I have never read this series before, I really do think I picked a good one to start with and if anyone is thinking of reading this who, like me, has not read any of the series, this book can be read on it's own and still be very enjoyable.

I do not know if other books in this series have the same mournful plaintive tone but if they do, I think I may need to read them. I was very impressed with just how haunting Turquoise Lament was. Four lovely stars. ( )

Many of the plot elements Are standard: girl in danger, Travis investigating a bad guy, etc. enough uniqueness to keep the suspense mounted. Trav’s style of investigation continues to set him apart. ( )

As he gets older, Travis McGee seems to become more and more maudlin--or perhaps it is his creator's fault. In this, the 15th entry in the series, McGee is called to help out the daughter (Pidge, later renamed Lou Ellen) of a deceased (naturally) former business partner who thinks that either she is going crazy--or her husband is trying to kill her. So Travis flies to Honolulu to investigate, or to put it more accurately, to practice his amateur psychology on the girl, who is in her early twenties, and her husband, an affable 270-pound former football player whom she married on the rebound not long after her father's tragic death in a motorcycle accident. Her mother died from cancer when she was much younger. It's that kind of book. Death is everywhere. Even in passing, MacDonald manages to tell about as many horrific deaths as he can. Characters we meet briefly turn out to have met tragic ends--and not just the character, but "him, his wife, and two of their four children." It is way way too much and one begins to wonder if the book even has a plot or if it is just going to be about McGee's obsession with the girl, because, yes, he is the one she really wants and even ran away when she was 17 and stowed away on his boat. But as McGee tells her later, statutory rape was not his thing. In any case, nothing is stopping him now. But of course we know that by the end of the book either something awful will happen to her as well or she and McGee will be somehow parted, despite McGee confessing to Meyer that this is a woman he could actually spend the rest of his life with. If it sounds like a soap opera, it is. Eventually, we find that there is more than a little skullduggery going on, relating to a "treasure book" the girl's father put together with information about where valuable ship wrecks might be found. After his death, it goes missing.

Meanwhile, Pidge and her husband are traveling alone on their boat from Hawaii to Pago Pago in American Samoa. As McGee and Meyer unravel the mystery of the missing treasure book, Travis begins to fear for her life (as we readers familiar with the fate of anyone who sleeps with Travis have been doing all along.) As a result, this is a very annoying book, since Travis can't do much to protect her while she is in the middle of the Pacific and basically out of communication. Remember, this book was published in 1973. He does take out some of his frustrations on a crooked lawyer in the book's best scene, which highlights McGee's remorseless, creative, cruelty. The lawyer deserves it, however, so at least this is one book where McGee himself isn't the biggest SOB. I haven't spoiled anything so far, and I won't talk much about the rest of the plot, but I will say that the ending is really a pitiful job of writing. Surely MacDonald could have come up with something a bit more clever than what he did. The reader is asked to have sympathy for poor Travis McGee, a man who in the course of the book spends as much time having sex with various women as he does solving the mystery. Obviously, this is not one of the better books in the series, though it certainly is high in grim fascination and creative ways to kill people. ( )