Darker Than Amber (Travis McGee Mysteries)
by John D. MacDonald
List Price:
Our Price: $3.95
You Save: $4.04 (51%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.29 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: John D. MacDonaldEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1996-02-27
ISBN: 0449224465
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Fawcett
Book Reviews of Darker Than Amber (Travis McGee Mysteries)
Book Review: Classic!
Summary: 5 Stars
Ask bestselling authors as various as Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Sue Grafton, Mary Higgins Clark, Jonathan Kellerman, Donald Westlake, Robert B. Parker, Ed McBain, Joseph Wambaugh, John Saul and Carl Hiaasen who their main influences are and one name keeps coming up, that of John D. MacDonald.
MacDonald wrote 70 novels including 21 in his famous Travis McGee series. Many of his books were bestsellers in the `60s, `70s and `80s. They were made into nine movies, one of the best known of which was the 1962 Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum thriller Cape Fear, remade by Martin Scorsese with Robert DeNiro in 1991.
Although MacDonald died at the height of his fame in 1986, he endures as an iconic figure for writers who revere him for his ability to create characters so believable that you wish you could sit down and have a beer with them. Or better yet, sit topside on McGee's Busted Flush houseboat - his winnings from a poker game - and sip a Plymouth on the rocks with the boat bum himself.
Travis McGee calls himself a salvage consultant, a euphemism for his periodic work finding and retrieving money or other valuables that were wrongfully taken from people who, for a variety of reasons, can't obtain justice through the legal system. If Travis is successful in returning something lost in a scam, he takes 50% as his cut. He admits that it is a large fee, but as he points out, half of something is better than nothing. After he earns a chunk of money, he pauses work once again and takes another installment of his retirement as a beach bum with a deep-water tan and a penchant for saving the broken birds of the feminine half of our species.
Like so many writers, I also owe a huge debt to MacDonald's writing, and I periodically revisit his novels for both their entertainment value and their example of superlative craft. Pick up any Travis novel and you will be amazed at how his storytelling endures decades later.
For example, here's the first sentence from Darker Than Amber: "We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped the girl off the bridge."
Thus begins a tale that sucks you in as Travis and his economist sidekick Meyer save a young woman who's thrown into the ocean from a bridge in the Florida Keys, her feet wired to a concrete block. Yet when Travis dives down and brings up the girl, who is coughing water and gasping for a second chance at life, she is curiously unappreciative. When they ask her who tried to kill her she says, "What's to tell? I tried to kill myself and it didn't work."
The story follows Travis and Meyer's efforts to learn what she is covering up and how she got involved with some deadly con artists who emptied the pockets of their victims and killed everyone who got in the way.
As McGee learns more about the girl's sordid past, he discovers a seemingly fool-proof racket where young call girls serve as bait to draw in moneyed men who have come to Florida to escape their dreary lives in the colder states.
When the girl they saved from drowning becomes a victim of the men who are running the racket, McGee and Meyer decide to take the men down. They conceive of an elaborate scheme that will out-con the con men. Of course, the plan does not go off smoothly, and the complications make for good tension.
Literary pundits and grad students writing their dissertations on American Detective Fiction will tell you that the Travis series set a new standard for the fictional detective archetype, one that explores an existential world where you can ultimately only rely on yourself, and the only meaning in life is what you make for yourself. In contrast with the experts, ordinary readers will tell you that the Travis McGee series is simply the best-written fiction in the genre.
Although the first books in the series are over 40 years old and the last ones are more than 20 years old, the only aspect of the series that reveals its age is Travis's objectification of women as special creatures who embody a range of feminine characteristics completely distinct from those of men. Yet even there, each book eventually reveals that Travis takes women very seriously, dealing with them as intellectually and emotionally-complete people first, and as women, second.
If you haven't read any of the Travis McGee novels, you will be delighted to find a captivating series that, decades after they were written, is still the high-water mark of American detective fiction. And if you read them years ago, you will delight in re-entering the world of South Florida waterways aboard the Busted Flush.
Like all of the Travis McGee novels, Darker Than Amber uncovers the vicious thieves of South Florida, predators who sometimes seem to outnumber their prey. And like the rest of the series, the ending is violent but never excessively graphic, satisfying but not sentimental. While Travis's code of ethics isn't the same as the code of law, it is just and fair and when done you will close the book with a single thought in mind: Which of the 21 books in the series should you read next?
That's a mystery to me...
Summary of Darker Than Amber (Travis McGee Mysteries)
A great bestseller starring Travis McGee, a real American hero--and maybe the star of a new movie franchise! Reissue.Literature & Fiction Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Literature & Fiction Books
Little Womenby Louisa May Alcott
Scribner; Published: 1986-06-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.49
Price in other shops:
The Killing Groundby JACK HIGGINS
HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS LTD; Published: 2007; Hardcover; Book
Saving Fish from Drowningby Amy Tan
4th Estate; Published: 2005; Paperback; Book
Life Expectancyby Dean Koontz
Harpercollins Pb; Published: 2005-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.00
Constant Princessby Philippa Gregory
Touchstone/Simon & Schuster; Published: 2005; Hardcover; Book
Wolf of the Plains (Conqueror, Book 1)by Conn Iggulden
Harper; Published: 2007; Paperback; Book
Saharaby Clive Cussler
Harper Collins Pb; Published: 2005-03-21; Paperback; Book
Perelandra (Cosmic Trilogy)by C. S. Lewis
Voyager; Published: 2005-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.64
Price in other shops:
The Lord Of The Rings: Part 2 The Two Towersby J. R. R. Tolkien
Harper Collins Publishers; Published: 2001; Paperback; Book
Red Marsby Kim Stanley Robinson
Trafalgar Square; Published: 2001-06; Paperback; Book
Similar Books and other products
Dress Her in Indigo (Travis Mcgee)by John D. MacDonald
Fawcett; Published: 1996-03-09; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.07
Price in other shops:
Pale Gray for Guilt (Travis McGee Mysteries)by John D. MacDonald
Fawcett Crest; Published: 1995-10; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.10
Price in other shops:
The Deep Blue Good-byby John D. MacDonald
Fawcett; Published: 1995-05-31; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.13
Price in other shops:
A Purple Place for Dying (Travis McGee, No. 3)by John D. MacDonald
Fawcett; Published: 1995-05-27; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.48
Price in other shops:
Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper (Travis McGee Mysteries)by John D. MacDonald
Fawcett; Published: 1996-03-09; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.73
Price in other shops:
One Fearful Yellow Eye (A Travis McGee Novel)by John D. MacDonald
Fawcett Crest; Published: 1995-10-26; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.88
Price in other shops:
Nightmare in Pink (Travis McGee, No. 2)by John D. MacDonald
Fawcett; Published: 1995-12-30; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.90
Price in other shops:
A Deadly Shade of Gold (Travis McGee Mysteries)by John D. MacDonald
Fawcett; Published: 1996-02-20; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.70
Price in other shops:
Bright Orange for the Shroudby John D. MacDonald
Fawcett; Published: 1996-02-28; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.90
Price in other shops:
Quick Red Fox (Travis McGee, No. 4)by John D. MacDonald
Fawcett; Published: 1995-06-27; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.32
Price in other shops: