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Title: Darker Than Amber (Travis McGee Mysteries)
ISBN: 0449224465
Author:
John D. MacDonald
Publicate Date: 1996-02-27
Publish: 1996-02-27
List Price: $7.50
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Mass Market Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $3.51
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $2.21
Amazon Merchant Price: $7.50
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Darker Than Amber
Ahh! What a delightful read! Travis sure does get himself in deep doo-doo from time to time, but typically, rises above the goop to salvage the broken lady. Good work, Trav!
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2: Introducing Meyer on a little fishing jaunt that hauls up a girl
"In that light the color of her eyes surprised me. Light shrunk the pupils small. The irises were not as dark as I had imagined. They were a strange yellow-brown, a curious shade, just a little darker than amber...She looked across at me and accepted the appraisal with the same professional disinterest with which the model looks into the camera lens while they are taking light readings."
- McGee sizing up Vangie, a very professional new acquaintance
I began reading the Travis McGee series at the wrong point - THE DREADFUL LEMON SKY - so it's a bit difficult for me to quite grasp the notion that Meyer, McGee's closest friend and a neighbour in the Bahia Mar marina, wasn't built into the series from the beginning. DARKER THAN AMBER introduces Meyer to the series as an already long-time friend, obscuring the fact that he's a new character, participating for the first time in one of McGee's cases from the moment a joint fishing jaunt turns into the rescue of a very tough pretty girl dumped off a bridge with a concrete block wired to her feet.
"I'm in the logic business, McGee. I deduce possibilities and probabilities from what I can observe. My God, man, compared to the mists and smokes of economic theory and practice, the world of actual events seems almost oversimplified. A corporate financial statement is the most nonspecific thing there is. If a man can't read the lines between the lines between the lines, he might as well stuff his money into a hollow tree."
Neither Meyer (whose preferred dealings with women are described here and seldom referred to again) nor McGee (who's just finished a short fling with a woman fleeing a bad marriage) are interested in a relationship with Vangie, but having saved her life and being impressed by her calm endurance, they'd like to help her if they could. A sometime call girl who turns out mysteriously to take frequent jaunts on cruise ships, she's been used as bait in a very complicated and profitable scheme a few too many times, and was being disposed of before her vestigial conscience could inconvenience, let alone threaten, some slick operators. Unfortunately (though perfectly in character), Vangie doesn't open up to Meyer and McGee, and McGee only begins uncovering the truth in the wake of a supposed hit-and-run, frustrated at the waste of someone he rather liked and wished well. "You feel good to do a thing like that. And then when they take what you saved and see how high they can splash it against a stone building, you get annoyed."
The first third of the book sketches in McGee's immediate past and introduces Meyer, then details their first successful rescue attempt, including a lot of analysis in passing about what type of situation Vangie must be mixed up in for such a murder attempt to occur, McGee's odd streak of prudery about women, and Meyer's coexisting cold-blooded analytic turn of mind and his ability to make friends with nearly anyone, anywhere. Investigating Vangie's place and her acquaintances turns up the only story elements that really fix it in time at 1966: a member of the housekeeping staff who's an undercover civil rights activist.
McGee's self-image as a knight in somewhat tarnished tomato-can armor fits well with this story, as the damsel in distress has been involved in the seamy side of the entertainment industry most of her life and the scam that brought about her death is *very* sleazy indeed.
Notable story elements:
- Florida's cruise ship industry is featured quite a bit, since it's integral to the scam Vangie was involved in.
- Oddly enough, Vangie's short stay on the Busted Flush isn't the point at which MacDonald brings in one of his standard sex scenes; that's done earlier in flashback as McGee reviews his recent first-aid fling with a newly separated woman.
- Interesting contrast between Noreen Walker, maid by day and civil rights activist by night, and various characters of color in THE GIRL IN THE PLAIN BROWN WRAPPER, a few books on.
- Some very clever bits of detective work, from Meyer and McGee's joint analysis of Vangie's character to McGee's location of Vangie's financial stash to the solving of the main puzzle.
"Time for one game?"
"If you promise if you get white not to open with that infuriating queen's gambit."
- McGee and Meyer
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3: Stronger and stronger...
Travis McGee is at it again in John D. MacDonald's 7th book in the McGee series, Darker Than Amber. McGee and his sidekick, Meyer, are minding their own business when a case is pretty much dropped in their laps. As the two men are fishing while tied up to a bridge, a woman is thrown off the bridge and sinks right in front of them like a stone. McGee dives overboard and is able to rescue the woman-despite the fact that her feet are wired to a cement block. The woman, Vangie, turns out to be a high-priced prostitute who was involved in a scam gone bad. It takes sometime, but McGee and Meyer are finally able to get the gist of Vangie's story, and they of course decide to help.
MacDonald does his usual job of providing a great tale of mystery, murder and intrigue. But one of the things I most enjoyed about Darker than Amber is that after having several cameo appearances in earlier books, we finally get to meet a fleshed-out Meyer. McGee and Meyer perform a good Dr. Watson/Sherlock Holmes routine, and their camaraderie rivals many of the other detective-sidekick combinations including Spenser and Hawk, and Poirot and Captain Hastings.
I am now 1/3 of the way through this 21 book series, and I have not been disappointed in a one. In fact, MacDonald just gets stronger and stronger with each subsequent book. It won't be long until I finish the entire series.
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4: Love that Travis!
While I still find "Flash of Green" to be my favorite MacDonald book, there's something so appealing about the Travis McGee series that keeps me coming back to them. And "Darker than Amber" has such a quick pace, that you cannot put this mystery down. And Travis, well, he's just Travis--you gotta love this guy! I just hope that MacDonald continues to gain in popularity, as I feel he is horribly overlooked.
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5: A Travis McGee novel.
The Travis McGee series is a very extensive (21 books) series by John D. MacDonald; the main character is a delightful personality, something of a cross between a standard hero and a con man antihero, and the books are all well-written and enjoyable, something of a cross between action-adventure and detective-mystery. There are certain similarities between the plots of the books, but there are generally enough differences to keep them from being truly formulaic.The books are all capable of standing on their own; a new reader can start with any one of them without feeling that he is missing anything, and this book is a perfectly good place to start, although it is the seventh written. The stories were set in the contemporary world, and are thus a bit dated now as they were written in the sixties and seventies, but this book is less jarringly so than some of the others.
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