Spine # k1046
“This is the most desperate breed there is. They are just a little too bright for the servile role of dogdom. So their loneliness is a little more excruciating, their welcomes more frantic, their desire to please a little more intense. They seem to think that if they could just do everything right, they wouldn’t have to be locked up in the silence—pacing, sleeping, brooding, enduring the swollen bladder. That’s what they try to talk about. One day there will appear a super-poodle, one almost as bright as the most stupid alley cat, and he will figure it out. He will suddenly realize that his loneliness is merely a by-product of his being used to ease the loneliness of his Owner. He’ll tell the others. He’ll leave messages. And some dark night they’ll all start chewing throats.”
John D. MacDonald; Nightmare in Pink
Travis McGee, Florida boat bum and part-time private investigator, is back. But this time he’s in New York City working on behalf of a friend, Mike Gibson. He asked McGee to help his sister, Nina, as her fiance, Howard, was murdered during a horrible mugging. McGee is there to evaluate the circumstances of his death while keeping Nina safe.
When peculiar details about Howard’s death surface, McGee looks into the departed’s employer, a real estate magnate and investment shark. This leads him into the crust of New York’s elite where McGee uncovers an underground network of shady lawyers, sex workers, and mad scientists.
There comes a breaking point when McGee gets too deep and the creeps behind Howard’s death chose him as their next victim. In order to keep McGee subdued they try and manipulate his consciousness through regular doses of mind-altering drugs. These treatments turn his perception of reality into a nightmare. A nightmare in pink.
I know that folks love them some Travis McGee. But Nightmare in Pink is a dud.
I’m sure it’s always been a temptation for series authors to take their protagonists on a trip away from their homebase, giving their imaginations a working vacation. But, one of the reasons why series detectives are so enjoyable is because they are products of particular environments. Where they intimately know the streets, the neighborhoods. They know the people, good and bad.
McGee is no different as he is at his best when he’s in Florida. That’s his beat. Watching McGee navigate NYC, especially in the follow up to the outstanding Deep Blue Good-By, was boring and disappointing. There are times when he exhibits a contempt for the city but his internal monologues don’t punch hard enough to make the fish out of water trick interesting.
Leave New York to Nero Wolfe or Harlem detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson.
Then we’ve got the villains whose dastardly scheme was a little too James-Bondy for my tastes. The evil mind control practices and hallucinogenic drug doses felt over-the-top if not hackneyed. These are better served in in spy fiction.
But, there are still things to enjoy in Nightmare in Pink including a couple humorous scenes along with some characteristic McGee observations that are dark and prescient. There’s just not enough good stuff to overcome the lackluster narrative.
C.D. Baxter’s Quick Review of Nightmare in Pink
Story – Mediocre; MacDonald and McGee can do better
Cover Eye Candy – Good