Books in Brief: Cinnamon Skin

Cinnamon Skin, by John D. Mac Donald (Harper & Row, 275 pp., $13.95). Every Travis McGee story is color-coded. The colors refer to either a beautiful woman or some danger she must be rescued from: Nightmare in Pink, The Long Lavender Look, and now Cinnamon Skin. All these novels star the huge and intelligent Travis McGee and his intellectual sidekick, Meyer the economist. But Meyer is in trouble. Rendered an emotional vegetable by the nasty ending of Free Fall in Crimson—a thrashing administered in 1981—the highly analytical Professor Meyer has been spending the last year watching television. Meyer! Watching television! McGee cooks up a scheme to get Meyer on his feet again, only it backfires and Meyer’s niece is blown up—as well as Meyer’s boat, the John Maynard Keynes. Then the chase begins. As in all John D. MacDonald constructions, it’s never a question of who, it’s a matter of when, where, and how the villain will be vanquished. They set the trap in Mexico, following a wild scene on a pyramid in the jungles of Cancún. Between adventures McGee, ever philosophical, discourses engagingly on anything that crosses his mental field of vision: teenagers playing video games in shopping malls, adults in traffic, how to tell when you’re in a first-rate restaurant before the food arrives, why exercise is bad and why man was not built to jog, slow-motion Chinese combat, the demise of Florida— Travis McGee is one of America’s finer social critics. The girl with the cinnamon skin doesn’t appear until we’re deep in Mexicobut she’s worth waiting for. McGee wins this damsel, of course, but he does not slay the dragon. A touching twist: McGee does very little bashing in this one; primarily he nurses his friend Meyer back to health. Call it intelligent trash, irresistible trash, classical trash.

(How about this line: “We sat at an outdoor bar drinking a brace of rum punches while we admired the pleasantly tanned mammary equipment of the younger lady guests.”)

JB

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Jeffrey Brodrick

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Cinnamon Skin, by John D. Mac Donald (Harper & Row, 275 pp., $13.95). Every Travis McGee story is color-coded. The colors refer to either a beautiful woman or some danger she must be rescued from: Nightmare in Pink, The Long Lavender Look, and now Cinnamon Skin. All these novels star the huge and intelligent Travis McGee and his intellectual sidekick, Meyer the economist. But Meyer is in trouble. Rendered an emotional vegetable by the nasty ending of Free Fall in Crimson—a thrashing administered in 1981—the highly analytical Professor Meyer has been spending the last year watching television. Meyer! Watching television! McGee cooks up a scheme to get Meyer on his feet again, only it backfires and Meyer’s niece is blown up—as well as Meyer’s boat, the John Maynard Keynes. Then the chase begins. As in all John D. MacDonald constructions, it’s never a question of who, it’s a matter of when, where, and how the villain will be vanquished. They set the trap in Mexico, following a wild scene on a pyramid in the jungles of Cancún. Between adventures McGee, ever philosophical, discourses engagingly on anything that crosses his mental field of vision: teenagers playing video games in shopping malls, adults in traffic, how to tell when you’re in a first-rate restaurant before the food arrives, why exercise is bad and why man was not built to jog, slow-motion Chinese combat, the demise of Florida— Travis McGee is one of America’s finer social critics. The girl with the cinnamon skin doesn’t appear until we’re deep in Mexicobut she’s worth waiting for. McGee wins this damsel, of course, but he does not slay the dragon. A touching twist: McGee does very little bashing in this one; primarily he nurses his friend Meyer back to health. Call it intelligent trash, irresistible trash, classical trash.

(How about this line: “We sat at an outdoor bar drinking a brace of rum punches while we admired the pleasantly tanned mammary equipment of the younger lady guests.”)