Customer Reviews

Cinnamon Skin (A Travis McGee Novel)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A boat blows up coming into harbor in the Florida Keys. Within hours a Chilean Terrorist group claims responsibility for planting the bomb with intent to kill the famed economist Dr. Meyer. Private Detective Travis McGee is suspicious and tracks Meyer -- a good friend -- down and finds he was in fact, not aboard the ill-fated boat.

Photographs from a nearby boat reveal that a man Evan Lawrence also may not have been aboard the boat. Lawrence recently married Meyer's niece, and when McGee's suspicions seem confirmed, the two friends (he and Meyer) begin a hunt to find out about Evan Lawrence's past.

Thus begins Cinnamon Skin, a taut, fun mystery thriller that leads two friends through the criminal past that formed a killer. Some of the most deft touches in the novel come when MacDonald describes the lives of people along the Rio Grande Valley in southwest Texas. At one point, I actually got out a road map and traced their quest from Eagle Pass to El Paso and back all the way to Brownsville. MacDonald blends fact with fiction at just the right pitch in this, his twentieth Travis McGee novel.

MacDonald writes like a writer who has earned it, man. He seems to know his story so well, there is very little drift in the way he tells a story. Each sentence is exact or darn near exact, and the end result is a taut mystery that is very fun and very entertaining -- the kind of novel you'll want to talk about with friends.

I highly recommend Cinnamon Skin to folks who like good old storytelling at its best, most genuine form. It is the perfect airplane, poolside, vacation novel to help you beat the heat this summer. And its depth will leave you feeling satisfied at any time of year. Good stuff.

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Stacey Cochran
Author of CLAWS available for 80 cents

If there's anywhere I'd rather go with Travis McGee other than Florida, it's Mexico. John D. MacDonald dives into the country's culture and landscape in "Cinnamon Skin" with his patented combination of cynicism, idealism, lechery and expertly rendered action, and you'll be really glad you came along for the ride.

"Cinnamon" is one of the later books in the series, and finds Travis and Meyer a little the worse for wear, time and loss having taken a toll. Travis starts the book by losing yet another good woman, and Meyer's still traumatized by events in the book before. That's what makes this series so great--the author's willingness to bring us along as his characters age, suffer and make mistakes.

I'm a younger, female reader, but have yet to find any mystery writer working today who even comes close to MacDonald. Basically, when I need a mystery fix, I'm more likely to re-read one of these than bother with the hacks that clutter the best-seller lists. Warm thanks to the publishers who brought out these spiffy new editions--even though a big part of the fun of discovering MacDonald is stumbling across the tattered original paperbacks with 1970s reciepts used as bookmarks and "Valley of the Dolls"-like babes on the covers.

Enjoy, and don't waste any more time on the inferior imitations!

It wouldn't take much of an argument to convince me that CINNAMON SKIN is the best -- or at least one of the best few -- of the fine "color-titled" Travis McGee mystery novel series by prolific John D. MacDonald (author of CAPE FEAR, etc.). This actually is at least two novels in one, as Trav and best-friend Meyer first travel America (mostly the Texas-area Southwest) ferreting out the murderous past of a serial killer -- then track him to his current lair in the Cancun-Yucatan area of Mexico and lay a dangerous jungle trap for him there. VERY highly recommended for fascinating characters (good and bad), local color, and tense action. Of course, as with all JDM's work and especially the McGee series, CINNAMON is well-crafted and written. Enjoy!

"My God, McGee, can't you come up with something more original?"

"I thought it was."

"It's a song, you idiot. Piel Canela: Cinnamon Skin. They sing it all over Mexico."

- sometimes a compliment just doesn't work

CINNAMON SKIN begins on an ominous note; McGee's gentle, scholarly friend Meyer, a year after the events of FREE FALL IN CRIMSON, is still suffering from having broken in the face of some very heavy threats by a particularly murderous psychopath. (As CINNAMON SKIN is self-contained - McGee summarizes Meyer's situation for his current, unusually long-running girlfriend Annie Renzetti at the start of the book - it isn't necessary to read CRIMSON first, although since it introduced Annie as well as Meyer's problem I'd recommend having it handy at least to read afterward.)

However, just as the reader may begin to suspect that this book will follow a predicable formula - Meyer helps McGee with a salvage operation, regains his self-respect - two separate plans to try to help Meyer out yield unexpected results. An old friend and colleague has arranged for Meyer to give a talk in Canada, while Meyer's only living relative, his niece Norma, arranged to visit with her new husband Evan Lawrence, and thanks to crossed wires Meyer's out of town for part of Norma's visit while she and Evan stay aboard his houseboat, the JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES.

Consequently, when Meyer's boat is bombed and lost with all aboard while on a fishing jaunt, Meyer himself isn't there. He's lost the last of his family, his home, and nearly everything he owns thanks to a self-proclaimed terrorist attack - but *that* snaps him out of his frozen depression. He's determined to see Norma avenged, and McGee (of course) is in on this from the start.

But the facts don't add up. The supposed Chilean outfit that claimed responsibility doesn't seem to exist, and nobody else involved in Meyer's only Chilean-related project has ever been threatened. Who was the intended victim? Hacksaw Jenkins, a straight-arrow charterboat row captain known to stay away from drug action? Norma, a rising young field geologist for a Texas oil company? Evan, a footloose good ol' boy?

The scene quickly moves from Florida to Texas as Meyer and McGee begin digging into the recent past of Norma and Evan. The necessary formalities of settling Norma's estate quickly set them on the beginning of a very long trail, where the missing pieces are the most significant of all: missing people, and missing money. The most notable settings in the book are Texas in high summer (various places, Meyer and McGee do a lot of driving without many fast-talking scams) and Cancun (which was a very new development at the time of the action of the book).

Several nice touches, a few of which I'll mention. McGee's relationship with Annie, the very successful manager of a hotel in Naples, has issues other than his long field trips for his job: *her* job involves working for a large company, with up-and-out promotion prospects. Various discourses all over the map, from a brief chat with a farm equipment supplier on the smartest farmer in his county (who works his land with mules) to time-shares in Cancun to various grieving relatives of several people who surely would hate for the state to take several years to try this case and then call it second-degree.

I rather enjoy Michael Pritchard as a reader for unabridged McGee stories, but tastes may vary.

In the last few Travis McGee novels, MacDonald focuses more than before on McGee's close friend Meyer. CINNAMON SKIN is a story in which Meyer takes the lead. He has to fight the demons of his past cowardice and also avenge the death of his niece. CINNAMON SKIN is one of the very best entries in the McGee series.

To paraphrase a cliche: Travis McGee books are like pizza; even when they're not great, they're still pretty good.

But usually the major narrative faults don't fully occur to me until after I've finished them. During "Cinnamon Skin," though, I was noticing them left and right.

The main villain -- a chameleon who marries women, drains their money and murders them -- is pretty old hat. The story is extremely low on action (one clumsy fight; one badly sketched death by auto accident; one shoot-out that ends rather ludicrously). And did this book really need the appearance of a well-connected Mayan princess? Well, maybe... but it strains credibility.

"Cinnamon" isn't without its virtues: It's cool to see Meyer get such a big supporting role; cool, also, to see the rare sight of McGee clearly botching a relationship and, later, baiting his ex in a pretty high school way. He's not the fresh tough guy he used to be and even, at one point, gets mad at younger characters for moving too fast for him.

This was the first McGee I'd read that was written in the 80s. It's funny because whenever I visualize MacDonald's novels, I always see them in stark, CinemaScope, Technicolor terms. I visualize them existing in much the same, bright, 60s, go-go world as "Point Blank" and "Harper," with the later jaunts perhaps resembling "The Parallax View." So it was funny to me to read references to things whose appearance in the pop culture world I remember: McGee actually reads "Cujo" at one point, and grouses about the loser kids at a videogame arcade. Startling at first, but eventually pretty amusing.

John D. MacDonald's 20th Travis McGee book "Cinnamon Skin" reads as well today as it did when published in 1982. It is one of the very few books I have ever re-read and it was refreshing to find that it is just as exciting, just as relevant today as it was when I first read it. In "Cinnamon Skin," we find Meyer's newly-wed niece Norma and her husband being murdered aboard Meyer's boat "The John Maynard Keynes"--and, of course, the circumstances are suspicious. Was the explosion at sea revenge for a drug deal gone wrong? Did it have something to do with Meyer's own past (after all, he'd been in Chile a few years earlier)? Regardless, it is greatly disturbing to Meyer who enlists his friend Travis to help. Meyer's loss is Travis', after all, Travis is rough and tough but philosophic,and the ensuing McGee adventure takes the two on a convulted odyssey from Ft. Lauderdale to Texas to Mexico. MacDonald holds us spellbound with his plot revelations, but he is also a master at capturing the local color (especially noteworthy here is his interesting "history" of Cancun), and of sparking his suspense with daubs of humor. MacDonald's works frequently touch on socially significant issues, such as the environment, and especially on the damages that developers have been plying on the Florida coast, from shabby construction to irresponsible waste disposal. He likes to remind us that we are, after all, in the 20th century. "Soon the bosses of the microcomputer revolution will sell us preprogrammed units for each household which (will provide for everything). It will be the biggest revolution of all, bigger than the wheel, bigger than Franklin's kite, bigger than paper towels." In his many books, sometimes MacDonald seems to assume the role of Cassandra outside the gates of Thebes, crying out his revelations and prophesies, yet he is doomed not to be believed. Tis a pity. "Cinnamon Skin" carries, brilliantly, the MacDonald/McGee mystique, and while the series is over thirty years old, the colors in the titles have not faded; Travis is as relevant today as he has always been. MacDonald's prose--if nothing else-- will transport the reader on a magical, mystical, enthusiastic ride, well worth the fare. Take a trip to Lauderdale--it'll be a treat.

Maybe I have a blind spot but I always thought this novel was one of the weakest in the McGee series. I am a great fan of John D. MacDonald but this novel just wasn't up to his usual standards.
McGee and Meyer hunt for the man who murdered Meyer's niece and who turns out to be a serial killer. Thankfully, serial killers do not seem to be as prevelent in our culture as they are in fiction. While there are some good scenes, the novel isn't up to the usual high standards of the author. If you're reading the McGee series, read this one last. Agree with another reviewer that both "Cinnamon" and "Free Fall in Crimson" have to be judged among the least of the McGee novels. But it is MacDonald so there is some fine writing even if the plot drags in places.

I like the solid character development and enjoy the clever ways MacDonald finds to draw McGee into events that, at first, seem to have little to do with him.

it's certainly not the last of the oh so great Travis McGee series. "The Lonely Silver Rain" was the ultimate McGee book.