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Tag Archives: mystery

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A Deadly Shade of Gold by John D. MacDonald (1965) – BR00272 (R2025) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
May 13 2025

Plot or Premise

Sam Taggart is an old buddy of Travis McGee, and he swings back into town carrying a Mexican gold statue. There are more where this one came from, but they were taken from him, and he wants McGee to help him get them back. Before anything comes of the plan, Taggart is murdered. So McGee sets out to find the gold and, if he can, avenge his pal.

What I Liked and Didn’t Like

The story is somewhat unusual as a big part of the timeline takes place in a remote coastal area of Mexico with a small hotel, a nearby town, and some local houses. An out-of-the-way spot where you can avoid the hubbub and remain almost anonymous, if you wish. The remote location works well, and there’s some ongoing intrigue with a potential Cuban exile.

There’s a slightly repeated storyline from book 3, with someone getting fleeced, but it’s different enough not to cause too many problems. It is almost incidental to the issue of the gold. And to be honest, nearly ALL of it is incidental to the gold. There are a lot of things going on. So much so that when a big event happens about two-thirds of the way through the book, it feels like a finale.

Except that a whole third act takes place in L.A.; action, subterfuge, and new recruits to the team. And a somewhat violent episode. McGee doesn’t escape unscathed, taking physical and substantial emotional damage through the salvage operation.

I have a few niggly concerns about the ending, the way some things worked in Mexico, and even the way things unfold in L.A. Just enough to drop the rating down a level. But it is a “bigger” story than most of the McGee series, more ambitious, and it mostly delivers.

The Bottom Line

McGee goes international and gets involved in Cuban politics

Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged book review, mystery, travis mcgee | Leave a reply

Nightmare in Pink by John D. MacDonald (1964) – BR00269 (R2025) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
May 8 2025

Plot or Premise

An Army buddy of McGee’s asks for help looking into the death of his sister’s fiancé, Howard Plummer. While Plummer looks to have been the victim of a simple mugging, the sister isn’t so sure that her pure, sweet Howard wasn’t somehow into something shady involving extra cash. McGee wants to help the buddy, but he also wants to know about piles of cash.

What I Liked and Didn’t Like

There are really four parts to the story, and I confess I don’t like them equally. The first part is the fiancé, the sister and the Army buddy. They may be the clients and written sympathetically, but they’re not particularly interesting.

The second segment is the crooks who have their hooks into a wealthy man who lives a bit of an isolated life from his ex-wife and two kids. While there’s a femme fatale running around, there’s not enough substance to her to make her truly menacing or truly attractive.

The third segment involves some badly written noir involving an involuntary stay at a psych hospital, overuse of some bad drugs, and the fear of lobotomies mixed with brainwashing. It’s just all way over the top.

However, there is some fifth business in the mix. One of the tertiary characters that McGee goes to talk to is an aging well-to-do woman who McGee knows from back in the day, and they work well together. She is the most interesting person in the story, albeit a bit shallowly developed. I’d love to see a story just about her life, to be honest.

The mystery is decent, the plot / grift has some spark for the time, but the roller-coaster reads as way too farfetched even for the period. A little too pulpy, even for McGee stories.

The Bottom Line

Too much psychobabble, not enough mystery

Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged book review, mystery, travis mcgee | Leave a reply

The Deep Blue Good-by by John D. MacDonald (1964) – BR00268 (R2025) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

The PolyBlog
May 6 2025

Plot or Premise

A dancer, Chookie McCall, has a friend, Cathy, whose father might have had some buried World War II loot. A guy named Junior Allen seems to have found it and run off with it, and she has no way to get it back. So, Chookie introduces Cathy to her friend Travis to see if he can help.

What I Liked

The classic series of 21 books starts with this one, with all of the main elements of the series apparent in the first two chapters.

Travis McGee is taking his retirement in fits and starts, not waiting until he’s 60 to take it all at once. He lives aboard a houseboat he won in a card game, and specializes in difficult salvage, retrieving things other people have stolen or conned away from rightful owners who have no legal way to get it back. His usual fee for a successful recovery? 50% of anything recovered.

Junior Allen is a piece of work and delights in destroying women. In addition to stealing from Cathy and her family, he also moved into a house of a rich widow named Lois, and raped, abused and gaslit her into a puddle of a human. Travis manages to help her heal and get back on her feet while he goes after Junior. Some teens get involved as further victims, but in the end, Travis is mostly the smarter man.

What I Didn’t Like

Travis’ relations with women are always half-positive/half-negative. He always treats them relatively with respect, far ahead of his time, but his solution to most of their healing is hanging around his houseboat, enjoying the sun, until they have enough self-respect again to want to bed the knight who saved them. This story is a bit raw in places, more so than some of his later books. But it’s still an amazing story.

The Bottom Line

The legend begins with a busted flush

Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged book review, mystery, travis mcgee | Leave a reply

Poison Flower by Thomas Perry (2012) – BR00197 (2021) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
June 27 2021

Plot or Premise

Jane breaks an innocent man out of jail but the real criminals grab her and torture her to talk. She doesn’t, of course, which sets off a long series of other events.

What I Liked

The crooks figure out that Jane is a pro, and that others must know who she is, so a lot of other hunters from previous books show up again. She ends up managing almost three fugitives at the same time — the original, a stray she picks up along the way, and herself.

What I Didn’t Like

The storyline is a bit hard to follow, as well as the original crime itself, the reason for everything getting started, and the logic behind how the medical supply stuff was all supposed to work. Equally, some parts seem almost like a dumb Sylvester Stallone or Bruce Willis movie where the good guy gets tortured, and a short while later, is ready to rock and roll again.

The Bottom Line

Over the top for violence.

Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged action, Amazon.ca, B&N, book review, Chapters, e-book, Ebook, fiction, Good Reads, Google, Kobo, library, Library Thing, mystery, mythology, Nook, novel, OPL, PolyWogg, prose, Reading Challenge, Savvy Reader, series, suspense, Whitefield (7) | Leave a reply

Runner by Thomas Perry (2009) – BR00196 (2021) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
June 25 2021

Plot or Premise

Jane is retired, ready to give advice if need be to would-be runners looking for her help, but she spends her days being the dutiful supportive wife of her surgeon husband. At a fundraiser for the hospital, a bomb explodes to hide the activities of a group of hunters determined to capture a pregnant girl before she can get to Jane.

What I Liked

As always, Jane is going to help. If she doesn’t, there’s no book, right? So yes, she helps the runner, gets her away, finds a way to get her safe, and Jane does some other sleuthing to help her stay hidden. I liked the “lull” in the action so to speak as Jane tries to return to her normal life after helping the girl, giving her some time to get ready for birth etc., and there is a surprisingly deep storyline about the fact Jane has been trying to have a baby of her own with no luck conceiving.

What I Didn’t Like

There are two elements in the story that I found a bit strained. First, Jane gets her away, gets her safe, and is helping her “get ready” for the birth. Annnnnd then just says, “See you later, I’ll be back before the due date”. Why does she leave? No real reason, it’s stupid. With predictable results. Equally, the final parts of the novel seem more like Die Hard than a Jane Whitefield novel.

The Bottom Line

Surprising mix of depth and misplaced action.

Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged action, Amazon.ca, B&N, book review, Chapters, e-book, Ebook, fiction, Good Reads, Google, Kobo, library, Library Thing, mystery, mythology, Nook, novel, OPL, PolyWogg, prose, Reading Challenge, Savvy Reader, series, suspense, Whitefield (6) | Leave a reply

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