Skip to main content

Mystery author #46: John D. MacDonald

Title: One Fearful Yellow Eye
Series detective: Travis McGee
No. in series: 8 (of 21)
Year of publication: 1966
Type of mystery: Blackmail and other nefarious business
Type of investigator: Private detective
Setting & time: Chicago, Illinois, and Florida, USA; 1960s

Story:
Travis McGee responds to a call for help from his former lover, Glory Doyle Geis, and flies up to Chicago to meet her. Her brain surgeon husband had died a long, slow death and while he was dying he had managed to turn most of his assets into money which then disappeared. His grown children by his first wife are deeply suspicious of Glory, who wants to find out what happened for her own peace of mind and to prove her innocence in the matter. Travis immediately suspects blackmail, and when he starts digging he uncovers a sordid trail of blackmail and violence.

Review:
When I picked up this book to read it I knew I was about to meet one of America’s most famous fictional PIs, but I didn’t know I was in for a stylistic treat as well. MacDonald’s style is literary and erudite and Travis McGee is a philosopher who uses his brain and understanding of human nature more than muscle power to solve this case.

While the author has tried to show that McGee loves, understands and respects women, his attitude towards them comes across as paternalistic to me, which was an annoyance, but otherwise I enjoyed the book and will read more of his novels should they come my way.

Rating: A stylistic treat as well as a well plotted mystery with a though as nails detective and thriller elements. 4 stars.
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
The style is appealing, but McGee's sweet thoughtfulness in giving so many a po' woman just the touch of sexual healing she needs palls quickly.

Jim McCullough
September 20, 2008 10:43 pm
Bibliophile said…
Hehe, guess that tells me what to expect if I read more of his books. Thanks for the chuckle.
September 22, 2008 6:49 pm
Anonymous said…
I was pleased to see I am not the only person to think this way. I very much enjoyed The Deep Blue Goodbye and read a couple of other McGee novels after this one. However, McGee's 'curing' of all women's problems by sleeping with them was rapidly tiresome for me. I have been reading MacDonald post 2000 but was it less so to readers in the 1960s? (I am male.) Similarly, while MacDonald is frequently applauded for being ahead of his time with his 'green' stance, I find McGee's characterisation of this position incredibly hypocritical. I've got my great home, so the rest of you should be content with living in the city and not spoiling the everglades or the coast, etc. Indeed, I find his hypocrisy extends to most topics he comments upon. A shame really, I think I could have continued to enjoy a less smug and sanctimonious McGee, but there you go. Unfortunately, several novels I bought on the strength of the TDBG will remain unread. Readers interested in this type of fiction would be much better off looking towards the other MacDonald (Ross).
January 06, 2009 1:43 pm
Bibliophile said…
Anon, I think that because the 1960s were a less politically correct era, the sexism would not have grated as much back then as it does today.

Thanks for the recommendation of Ross MacDonald. I have a couple of his books lined up to read.
January 07, 2009 1:47 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to make a simple origami bookmark

Here are some instructions on how to make a simple origami (paper folding) bookmark: Take a square of paper. It can be patterned origami paper, gift paper or even office paper, just as long as it’s easy to fold. The square should not be much bigger than 10 cm/4 inches across, unless you intend to use the mark for a big book. The images show what the paper should look like after you follow each step of the instructions. The two sides of the paper are shown in different colours to make things easier, and the edges and fold lines are shown as black lines. Fold the paper in half diagonally (corner to corner), and then unfold. Repeat with the other two corners. This is to find the middle and to make the rest of the folding easier. If the paper is thick or stiff it can help to reverse the folds. Fold three of the corners in so that they meet in the middle. You now have a piece of paper resembling an open envelope. For the next two steps, ignore the flap. Fold the square diagonally in two. Yo...
25 comments
Read more

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...
9 comments
Read more