Customer Reviews

Darker Than Amber

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Travis & Meyer are midnight fishing aspart of a recreational cruise on the Busted Flush. They witness an attempted murder, and effect a rescue. The title refers to the rescuee, a girl whose eyes, as McGee notes, are "darker than amber"; McDonald leaves the reader to discover that her soul is considerably darker than amber, too.

After her recovery, she decides to reclaim money earned with her former associates; her greed allows her old cohorts to silence her permanently. MCGee & Meyer had learned the girl was part of an elaborate lonely heart sting, baiting well-to-do men, reeling in their money, and throwing their bodiesinto the sea. McGee metes out justicein the name of selfdefense & in memory of the numerous men murdered aspart of this scam.

Until the vividly recorded rescue, the story moves quickly, almost likethe tide coming in. After the rescue,the McDonald philosophy on the dark side of life is woven into the slowly unraveling plot. The writing is full of local color, witty dialogue, McGee/Meyer pranks, and numerous observations on the human condition, machinations, and motiviations.

Thebad guys get what is coming to them, and there is financial recompense for the murdered victims families, and forMcGee & Meyer. As a reader, I felt McDonald had kicked me hard in the stomach, and while I was doubled over,rubbed my face innto the evil that men can do. Like cGee, I can return to mylife, but a part of this story clings to my memory months after I have read it, like a fictional metaphor to remind me of the darker than amber colors in the real world.

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.

The late John D. MacDonald continues to impress new generations of mystery/thriller readers with his Travis McGee "color-title" series, more than three decades after he began it.

DARKER THAN AMBER isn't the first McGee adventure (that's The Deep Blue Good-Bye, and that's where serious new readers should begin), but it is one of the best and a long cut above most of MacDonald's competitors. Perhaps a bit "darker" than many of the 20 other McGee novels, AMBER isn't for faint hearts; but it also isn't merely excessive violence-for-violence-sake, either.

McGee, the "thinking person's private eye", is a self-styled "salvage expert" whose frequent salvage is a friend's soul... What a guy: tough, tender, fearless and intelligent all at the same time! (With a unique and lovable sidekick, Meyer, supporting casts of fascinating characters, and very well realized South Florida and Mexican locales thrown in for good measure: a real "find".)

As to the possibilities of an upcoming McGee film series (AMBER already was filmed once, starring Rod Taylor), I'd love to hear more: an exciting possibility!

I've read almost all of the Travis M series and I believe this is the best one of the lot (Dreadful Lemon Sky and Dress Her in Indigo get very honorable mentions). The plot is a bit improbable but once you buy into it (hey a lot of Crazy stuff happens to Trav), this book really takes off. The real star is McGee and his insights into women and the dark recesses of the human mind. It's not real deep but deeper than your average paperback hero. If you don't like this one, you won't like the others.

Part time white knight and full time beach bum Travis McGee rescues a rotten to the core damsel in considerable distress. Seems this beautiful sociopath has developed a serious case of the conscience, something her now former partners have not. When the girl meets her inevitable and quite bitter fate, McGee (always the one to right a terrible wrong, and this girl was behind some truly terrible ones) and his friend Meyer begin plotting revenge. MacDonald's writing, as usual, sparkles with wit, insight, and tension. Read any of MacDonald's novels and you'll see why he was such a highly respected author. Recommended.

"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

Unlike some of the other books in this series that ease into the action, "Darker Than Amber" starts with the first line--and it's one of my favorites:

"We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped the girl off the bridge."

The novel starts from that point and keeps building as McGee pits himself against sociopaths in a murder/prostitution ring.

This is an extremely satisfying book cover-to-cover. MacDonald's writing is incredible. Mcgee is likeable and interesting. It is fun spending time in his world.

If you're new to the series this is a great place to start.

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.

I have read and re-read all of the Travis McGee novels. This is one of the best. The introductory fishing scene is the best opening of all the books. While I enjoy all of the Travis McGee novels the ones written in the 60s are better than the later novels. Travis is relaxed in his own carefree lifestyle not worrying about what lies ahead and has less of the self-contempt that dominates the later books as he ages and looks into his future as an "aging beach bum". MacDonald has a good narrative style and a his plotting while a little loose is better that many such books. These books give you a true appreciation of someone writing from the first person perspective. This perspective also allows MacDonald to dot his novels with some of his own personal perspective about life which he attributes to Travis. I believe the best thing about MacDonald's writing is that he respects the fact that he is a paperback novelist and appears unconcerned whether or not his books are considered "literature" but fiercely determined to be a really good paperback novelist which brings his work closer to literature than writers with more pretentious aspirations. I also like the fact that he works on a small canvas like Hammett and Chandler. None of these authors' protagonists are trying to save (or even change) the world, they are just clean up their little piece of it. Grab yourself a Plymouth on the rocks with a twist of lime and have a good time.

Travis McGee delivers rough justice and John D. MacDonald a satisfying suspense tale. Sometimes you just need a hamburger when reading books, and "Darker Than Amber" is one fine hamburger.

At times, it is more than that. MacDonald takes the opportunity during the story's quieter, more atmospheric patches to round out his depiction of McGee, his celebrated fictional "salvage consultant" for whom "Darker Than Amber" was his seventh outing. Contrasted against McGee's own jaded-if-honorable philosophy of life is a group of sociopathic serial-killers-for-profit who literally crash McGee's party when they drop one of their ex-associates off a bridge and into a snook hole where McGee and his friend Meyer just happen to be fishing.

"Darker Than Amber" introduces McGee to one of the more arresting characters I've met in a while, Vangie Bellemer, a member of the criminal ring who wants out. She's no good girl by any stretch of the imagination; when asked about the people she helped kill, she tells Meyer "people are dying all over the place for all kinds of reasons" and that "if I'm out of this one, it couldn't bother me less." But she's brave, resourceful, and, after a wrenching drowning scene at the book's start, summons McKee's more stoic impulses. He saved her life and now feels responsibility for what's left of it.

Filled with lush descriptive passages of Florida's Gulf Coast in the middle 1960s, "Darker Than Amber" casts a deep spell for much of the way. The development of McGee's relationship with the equally cynical-yet-noble Meyer gives the book needed likeability, and their takes on Vangie and her associates are wry and eloquent. Nothing surprises this pair, it seems, and we feel secure in their company.

The best parts of the book are the action sequences, beginning with the first paragraph, which as other reviewers here say, is a helluva grabber. The handling of Vangie later on raises the bar further. The transition from Chapter 5 to Chapter 6 is shockingly abrupt but makes perfect sense, and puts the whole Vangie story in perfect context.

The book's wrap-up feels pat, though, and a bit too antiseptic, almost at times like a weaker "Mission: Impossible" episode with too many bells and whistles for a real private-eye-type operation. One wants a little more from this ring of bad guys than MacDonald delivers. We do get another terrifically-described action moment around a ship's gravity conveyor involving a bad guy who takes a licking but keeps on ticking. McGee and Meyer's last act of rough justice, involving no more than parking a car and placing a call, is perhaps the book's most satisfying moment.

That's how I felt after reading this book, satisfied. Maybe it could have been more nourishing, but like a hamburger, "Darker Than Amber" will leave you wanting more.