"Travis McGee Series" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald John D)

A PURPLE PLACE FOR DYING - 1964

Meyer, brilliant economist and man of perception, wisdom and knowledge, is briefly introduced. In future books this wonderful character will provide the author, himself a Harvard MBA, an opportunity to deliver fascinating facts and philosophies concerning local and world economies and other global subjects. Meyer will also unravel the financial flim-flammery taking place in some of the stories.

This book came out well before the TV series "Dallas" began, and may have been an inspiration for it.

McGee is summoned to Esmeralda, a (fictitious) place in the Southwest, where his rich haughty client gets shot dead before Travis has a chance to tell her "I don't take this kind of case". Her husband, Jass Yeoman, an empire-building, hell-raising, Texas-style patriarch can't understand why anyone would want to kill his restless young wife. Since McGee is available and passes Jass's manhood standards, they strike a deal to investigate the matter. Travis proceeds to get acquainted with the local feudal society from Sheriff's Department to ranch mansions to barrios. At the local college he encounters a female example of academic inbreeding, and she's such an annoying twit that we wonder why McGee even bothers to make the effort of getting her to shed her neuroses.




THE QUICK RED FOX - 1964

MacDonald apparently loathes the Hollywood scene, and he creates some characters to show us why. (A couple of times during the series Travis reels off a list of things he has no use for, and "actresses" are included.) There's a new character being added to McGee's Regulars, a photography wizard named Gabe Marchman who will be lending his expertise when Travis needs it.

It was every celebrity's worst nightmare - a blackmailer in possession of sensationally obscene pictures. So, Foxy redhaired movie star Lysa Dean sent her secretary to pursuade a reluctant McGee to solve her little problem. Accompanied by the frosty secretary, who was rapidly thawing in Travis's manly presence, they chase after clues in Big Sur, a New York ski resort, Hollywood, and Las Vegas. We are given some amusing observations about all these locales and their denizens.




A DEADLY SHADE OF GOLD - 1965

MacDonald is at his masterful best here with atmosphere, plot, political intrigue, and hilarious dialog complete with with accents and attitude. This is the first of the Travis books which presage the drugs-and-corruption-in-Florida tone of the "Miami Vice" TV series, which debuted in 1982.

While retracing the wanderings of a murdered friend, Travis gets involved with the antique treasures business; Cuban refugees and their feverish anti-Castro plottings; high-and-low-life in a (fictitious) Mexican fishing port; and extreme Hollywood-style decadence. He also gets into, and out of, the clutches of a rich, beautiful and formidable jet setter who is looking for a replacement for her previous arm-ornament.




BRIGHT ORANGE FOR THE SHROUD - 1965

A blinded-by-love bridegroom named Arthur Wilkinson got mercilessly picked clean by his new wife and her accomplices. This was accomplished through more-or-less-legal real estate investment legerdemain. After seeing how callously this sweet, helplessly naive, overbred preppy got turned into buzzard-meat, Travis decides to go after the villains and get back the money. Arthur's former girlfriend, Chookie, is signed-on to repair poor Arthur's broken spirit while aiding the investigation.

There's quite a lineup of slimy characters - a terrifying seducer-rapist redneck, the no-mercy con artist wife, a desperately-hungry lawyer, and a troupe of well-rehearsed swindlers.




DARKER THAN AMBER - 1966

This is the darkest of the McGee stories, with meaner characters, less hilarity, and none of Travis's usual sexual interludes.

At story's start a live woman gets thrown off a bridge, wired to a block of cement, and it's a miracle that Travis and Meyer are able to dive in and save her. Turns out she's been involved in deadly doings involving lonely males on cruise boats, and her sinister employers have decided she is no longer an asset to their enterprise. Travis and Meyer assume various identities, insert themselves into the middle of things, and run a couple cons of their own.