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Title: Nightmare in Pink (Travis McGee, No. 2)
ISBN: 0449224147
Author:
John D. MacDonald
Publicate Date: 1995-12-30
Publish: 1995-12-30
List Price: $7.50
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Mass Market Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $3.50
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $0.31
Amazon Merchant Price: $7.50
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1: Audacious.
Nightmare in Pink by John D. Macdonald is one of the earlier entries in the Travis McGee series.
What is this book about? That question can be answered in one word. Women. More specifically, the women of New York. MacDonald is not shy when it comes to offering up opinions. And in Nightmare in Pink, a number of detailed and often whithering descriptions of various types of females who inhabit The Big Apple are given. These characterizations are accomplished through both the shockingly blunt introspection of Travis McGee and the self-revealing lines of dialogue MacDonald has provided the women in question. From the young career woman to the society matron to the man-eating baracuda to the high priced call girl, the author takes no prisoners when it comes to describing the mostly, though not entirely, unflattering mindsets that make each one who they are.
Whether these sterotypic characterizations are accurate or not is almost irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that this is what McGee and MacDonald seem to believe and the novel is highly effective in presenting these beliefs to the reader.
Oh yes, there's also a crime to be solved, the details of which are rather sketchy. Something about a conspiracy to embezzle millions from a moneyed family's Manhattan based foundation. And two thirds of the way through the narrative, Nightmare in Pink turns into a work of science fiction with McGee being kidnapped and force fed mind altering drugs in a hellish mental ward.
This novel is far from perfect but one has to admire the audaciousness with which it was written. In creating Nightmare in Pink, Macdonald unapologetically pulled no punches in describing the female characters and fearlessly defied convention by combining genres. Highly recommended.
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2: Not as good as others in the series
I recently started reading the Travis McGee books for the first time (and in order.) DEEP BLUE GOOD-BY was a good, taught, lean -- if imperfect -- thriller. It was intruing enough, and McGee & his setting seemed to hold enough potential, that I was fired up to read NIGHTMARE IN PINK, thinking that the series, like many another recurring-hero series, would actually improve in sequence due to the author getting more and more comfortable with the character, setting, & style. Unfortunately, this book let me down.
First, it was set in New York City, which, while not neccessarily a bad thing in and of itself, does detract from a lot of the attractiveness of the McGee series -- to me, a big part of the selling point is that in other McGee books, the setting is South Florida (where I was born & raised) in the mid-1960s (over a decade before I was born.) New York seemed a much more generic setting -- I mean, how many books (and movies!) are set there? It's been covered already!
Also, the dialogue -- something I had a problem with in DEEP BLUE was that the dialogue seemed to be dated, even by the standards of four decades ago (I'm basing this on having read a lot of books & seen a lot of movies from back then.) The dialogue reads like 1930s and '40s movies, when the actors still hadn't yet realized that they were no longer on stage and so could talk more like normal people. Some of the dialogue is outright caricature. (How many times in one conversation can a character start and/or end a sentence with the word "Darling" before it starts to get annoying?) It's like MacDonald was trying to write hip dialogue and ended up with dialogue that WAS hip -- when he was a young man, ie before World War II.
The McGee series does, however, have enough of a good reputation that I'll assume this one is just a lemon that MacDonald, like all good writers, produce from time to time, and I'll at least give book #3 a chance to redeem the series for me.
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3: Must Read...
I plan on reading every book in this series (already finiished five). It's that good.
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4: Remarkable counter-culture hero
Four decades ago, Travis McGee disdains the modern world, yet builds an honorable life for himself in the midst of it. How? By becoming a beach bum in Florida! Not truly a bum, more an independent contractor who takes a job when money from the previous job starts waning. His deal is ever the same: "I recover what was taken from you--conveniently, the yous are mostly damsels in distress--and I keep half."
In Nightmare, "Trav" is paying a debt to an old war buddy who lies paralyzed and suspects his sister's fianc?? died under circumstances that suggest foul play. He wants Travis to travel to New York and get to know his sister, provide some comfort and assistance, then "poke around" and see what he can find out.
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For my complete review of this book and for other book and movie
reviews, please visit my site [...]
Brian Wright
Copyright 2007
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5: Nightmare In Pink
Aw come on, Travis, you can do it! Poor fellow has to pull out all the stops in order to salvage the poor young thing.
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