Pale Gray for Guilt (1968)

PALE GRAY FOR GUILT starts out dark and stays that way. An old high school football teammate of McGee, who has moved to Florida and bought a small motel and marina on a river, is being squeezed by local land developers and crooked politicians who want to pay him a pittance for his land and who have systematically destroyed his business in an attempt to run him, his wife, and their three kids off. It gets worse from there, and pretty soon McGee is investigating his supposed suicide. There isn’t much McGee won’t do to avenge an old friend, and if it means breaking a few dozen laws along the way, no problem. While it is a pleasure to see McGee running one of his con schemes with the aid of his good buddy Meyer, he really pulls out the plugs this time, and the book’s feeble explanations of how he and Meyer can end up scot free and unthreatened at the end don’t convince.

The treatment of women in this book is marginally better than usual, with Connie, a widow running an orange plantation coming across particularly strong. Janice, the wife of McGee’s dead friend, emerges with her dignity intact as well. The private secretary to one of the bad guys is an interesting amoral character, which gives McGee free rein to pontificate for several pages about women who are willing to use their bodies as part of their work. There are also detours to discuss how unexciting American cars are (circa 1968), rock ‘n’ roll, different ways of protesting against a corrupt society, and so on. Every time I return to MacDonald’s work, I am reminded of how consistently pessimistic it all is. And the McGee books have their recurring annoyances, such as the need to get rid of his lady friend in one way or another so that she isn’t an encumbrance for the next book. This book tries yet another approach, since it might be improbable to have another one meet a fatal accident of some sort or another (a shard from an explosion or whatever).

Despite these shortcomings, the book is very readable, and behind the too-frequent overwritten bombast it does have a few things to say about greed and the transformation of much of the Florida coast from a sparsely populated wilderness to what it has now become. MacDonald’s settings are as well drawn as always, giving this flawed book a depth that few genre writers could achieve. ( )

Starts like a typical McGee mystery, a friend dies and Travis has to figure out why (One gets the impression that it's not too safe to hang around with McGee at the rate his friends get bumped off) . But this one is less violent than many, as it turns out that the friend was swatted away like a fly when he gets in the way of shady Florida real estate dealings. McGee, therefore, rather than going out with battle-axe and broadshield, takes up the financial weapons of leverage and syndicates to avenge him. This is a surprising twist on the McGee stories, at least for the few I've read, but it works out well, and is eerily prescient of some of the financial wheeling and dealing on a national scope to which we've been exposed over the past several years.

There is a surprising romantic twist to the story as well, a departure from the usual free-wheeling 1970's love-in that usually takes place in a McGee story, with a tearjerker of an ending. What it comes down to is that this book is quite an accomplishment - providing a sufficient amount of blood, gore and sex to appease its usual target audience, yet with enough additional plot elements to satisfy a more thoughtful reader. I don't know if that was MacDonald's plan, but it is definitely what he accomplished. ( )

Tush Bannon is one of McGee's friends, and when he is murdered by having his head crashed by a heavy yard weight, meant to crush cars, McGee goes after the bastards who killed Tush. ( )

Another great John D. MacDonald. Set in Florida amid real estate dealers and corrupt bureaucrats. Less violent than some of the preceding volumes. ( )