Customer Reviews

Pale Gray for Guilt

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John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series was one of the first truly successful "hard boiled detective" genre series to make it big at the mass market level of sales. Written mostly in the 1960's and early 1970's the books could come across as somewhat dated time period pieces except that MacDonald was a suspense writer of the highest order whose gritty, hard edged characters come to life on the page just as readily today as they did back when written.

In point of fact, these really aren't "detective" books at all; they are generally better classified as suspense novels. However, the formula utilized in the books, as well as the realistic, hard hitting writing style they displayed, set the stage for many a fictional detective series to follow.

McGee advertises himself as a "salvage" specialist. He's more a high-end repo man. If you've lost something of extraordinary value that you do not want the police involved in recovering, he'll do it for you-for 50% of the fair market value of the lost valuables. Once he's made a big score he reverts to being a beach Bum in ft. Lauderdale Florida where he lives on the beach in a houseboat won in a card game.

The Travis McGee novels break down basically into two types of story either (A) a "recovery" tale and (B) a revenge tale. The former is the far more common format.

Pale Gray for Guilt is one of the latter. Tush Bannon, one of Travis' old high school buddies, is killed by developers who want his land for a project, Travis swears revenge. Along with his sidekick, Dr. Meyer, a nationally known economist and fellow beach bum, McGee sets in motion a complicated and dangerous scam to entrap and bankrupt the killers.

On the whole I like the recovery novels better than the revenge novels, but this is one of the better of the latter sort. The plan is ingenious, the characters, as usual, well developed and the con victim so loathsome one is fully engaged in the effort to get the SOB.

This is probably not the best book to start out with McGee but, once hooked, this will make a very pleasant read.

A final note: MavDonald wrote many novels other than the McGee series-however, all McGee novels have a color in the title. If you're browsing for McGee, just select any novel with a color in the title, and there Travis will be.

Tush Bannon, friend of Travis, a good and gentle man is killed horrifically by an anvil crushing his face and chest. First declared suicide-admittedly a peculiar way to do the deed--- later changed to murder. Tush owned a small marina whose acreage was a valuable parcel to the big bad business interests, and he was being squeezed out. He left a shocked and bereft wife and three young sons. Gallant Knight Travis rides to the rescue.

"Pale Gray for Guilt" was the 8th novel in the Travis McGee series, and I judge it as medium-good McGee. Published in 1968, it has an excellent contemporary flavor about it that captures the late `60s very well. The major flaw in the novel is the extraordinarily complicated sting set up by Meyer and Travis as revenge for Tush's demise. The big businessmen are set up to take a financial bath, and there are pages and pages devoted to capital gains, covering margins, selling short, etc. This has the effect of confining John Wayne to Wall St., not a happy or even very interesting state of affairs. However, Travis does get to expound, and wow his usual lusty women. (this one named Puss Killian-would such a name even be allowed today?) MacDonald allows Travis his special brand of sentimentality, "-went into the master bedroom and slipped out of the robe and into the giant bed and wished I wasn't too old to cry myself to sleep." No other tough private eye would ever be permited to think that way in print.

By the time this book was written, MacDonald had found his groove, though it was too bad he had to foist his interest in the stock market on Travis who, as we all well know, cares nothing about such things. It never happened again.

...and whatever you do, read this one before reading "The Lonely Silver Rain". "Pale Gray" is vintage McGee, and a very fascinating exploration of the Big Con. There must be something more entertaining than these books, but I can't imagine what it would be.

Many of Travis McGee's 1960s adventures seem a bit dated today. In his earlier incarnation, McGee was less cynical but more of a hedonist. He became a more appealing hero the more world weary he beacme. Nevertheless, "Pale Gray for Guilt" is the best of the earlier books because it has a classic McGee story that could be the plot of an old west movie. Bad guys kill the hero's friend and the hero sets out for revenge. Only with McGee, you know the revenge won't be conventional in nature.

In constructing Travis McGee, MacDonald took up where Chandler left off. A bold but introspective, thoughtful but hard-edged character, McGee is the rusty white knight in a world despising chivalry. Here, he and his best friend Meyer look into the suspicious death of an old friend. Their goal is to remove the pleasure that the plotters derived from the killing. They enter worlds of high finance, cheap scams, and political connections, seeking restitution and a reckoning. This, the best of the McGee series, offers a look at revenge that doesn't depend on blood. It is a superb book that crafts the McGee and Meyer characters into contemporary Quixotes, tilting at windmills and trying to redress wrongs.

A surefire way to bring an interesting, smoothly written narrative to a screeching halt is to introduce a complicated subplot involving stock manipulation. When the reader is forced to stop reading and locate pencil, paper and a dictionary of financial terms in order to bring him or herself up to speed about what is transpiring, that magical bond between fiction writer and audience is broken.

Pale Gray for Guilt is installment number 9 in John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series. It starts off with a grisly murder. The victim, a hard working family man, happens to be one of McGee's oldest and dearest friends. After McGee identifies the two men most likely to be responsible for his friend's death, he sets out on a mission of revenge. With a little help from his economist friend, Meyer, McGee sets up a rather hard to follow real estate swindle designed to financially ruin one of the two men. Then, this time with a huge amount of help from Meyer, he puts in place a plan to artificially run up the price of a publicly listed stock in order to damage the net worth and, more importantly, the reputation of the other man. Simultaneously, this self same adventure in stock manipulation will bring financial security to the murder victim's widow.

Needless to say, all of this proves too complicated for most readers to really follow or believe and consequently mars what is otherwise a pretty good hardboiled, hard edged crime novel.

Standard in many Travis McGee novels is the scenario wherein McGee takes an emotionally scarred damsel in distress and restores her psychic well-being by boincking the living daylights out of her on an idyllic cruise lasting several weeks. When this highly effective therapy is over, therapist and client both happily go their separate ways. Thankfully, that nausea inducing scenario is missing from Pale Gray for Guilt and I, for one, am very grateful. Instead, MacDonald introduces the intriguing character known as Puss Killian. Puss is Travis' latest ladyfriend du jour but she is portrayed as a very strong individual and is given a lot of interesting things to say. (Faithful Travis McGee fans will hear about Puss Killian again in The Lonely Silver Rain.)

Generally, Pale Gray for Guilt is well written. It features some interesting characters and several surprising and, at times, thought provoking plot twists. A worthwhile read whose positive attributes outweigh the negative.

I love the way I feel like I've fallen into the world of Travis McGee when I start reading one of John MacDonald's novels. I can feel everything, see everything, as though I was there. Outstanding.

Travis takes it very personally, and conspires with friends of the widow to recover a large amount of money through a clever ruse in the stock market. The financials are way over my head, but we get some vintage McGee insights on the path to wealth recovery and salvage. The following is a memorable rumination on the nature of death:

"I looked out of the jet at December gray, at cloud towers reaching up toward us. Tush was gone, and too many others were gone, and I sought chill comfort in an analogy of death that has been with me for years. It doesn't explain or justify. It just seems to remind me of how things are.

Picture a very swift torrent, a river rushing down between rocky walls. There is a long, shallow bar of sand and gravel that runs right down the middle of the river. It is under water. You are born and you have to stand on that narrow, submerged bar, where everyone stands. The ones born before you, the ones older than you, are up upriver from you..."

It's a pretty long soliloquy--actually, when you read it carefully, it seems a bit strained--but I appreciate McGee's sensitivity to a universal concern, especially for a man of action who's probably still in his 30s.

...

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Brian Wright

Copyright 2009

Enough double-crosses and triple-crosses to fill four books. After reading this book, I re-read the last two chapters of Lonely Silver Rain. Pale Gray is simply one of the best from the master!

i have, and have read all of his books..started late, in 1965, and love every one, from the first travis to the last....and all the others......cannot choose a favorite, cause all are # 10'