Cinnamon Skin

“When you despair of what passes for storytelling in today’s dumbed-down video ‘culture,’ I have a prescription that works every time: Return to the Masters. Turn on some Gershwin, Ellington, Cole Porter, curl up, and open the first page of a John D. McDonald novel. You shall be restored!” — Joseph Wambaugh


There are several books in this landmark series by John D. MacDonald that resonate beyond those tidy labels people enjoy placing on books — so that they can categorize them as this or that — and this is one of them. I’ve always thought it was a shame that Cinnamon Skin came just before MacDonald’s swan song, The Lonely Silver Rain, because it gets overshadowed by the final entry. Though Lonely Silver Rain deserves show more the praise it receives, in many ways, Cinnamon Skin is a rich and mature novel with moments both poignant and powerful. It contains as much insight into the frail human condition as anything the author ever wrote. Sandwiched between the fun and rather freewheeling Free Fall in Crimson, and The Lonely Silver Rain, this three-book stretch late in the series rivals that of A Deadly Shade of Gold/Bright Orange for the Shroud/Darker Than Amber in the early years as MacDonald’s absolute best. There were other great ones, and some really good ones, but they alternated. The sustained excellence of those two separate three-book stretches in the series, written nearly twenty years apart, is astounding.

Cinnamon Skin is one of the most personal narratives of the series. A surprising number of the entries had some personal connection, but usually for McGee. This time, it’s more personal for Meyer —

"She wasn't at all pretty, but being in love made her beautiful."

That statement describes Meyer’s niece, Norma, who is blown sky high in Meyer’s boat while he’s away in Toronto trying to find the dignity taken from him by Desmin Grizzel near the end of Free Fall in Crimson. Geologist Norma Lawrence was not alone, however. She was honeymooning with Evan, who along with McGee’s old friend, Hack, also got blown to bits. To add to Meyer’s loss, a group calling themselves the Liberation Army of Chile has taken credit, apparently targeting Meyer, but killing his niece and husband by mistake.

A year has passed since the incidents in Free Fall in Crimson and it has certainly been a devastating one for Travis McGee’s best pal. McGee and Meyer’s gal-pal Aggie Sloane had cooked up the Toronto lecture just to get Meyer back in the game, walking among the living. McGee is still with Free Fall's Annie as Cinnamon Skin opens, but the seeds for a bittersweet parting begin taking root when Annie is offered a resort in Hawaii to manage. She wants McGee to pick up his stuff and come with her. Like Spenser and Hawk in Robert B. Parker’s series, which came later, there is something at McGee’s core she can’t quite reach. It is the part of him which enables him to do what he does, and to live as he does, and it bothers her.

When McGee sees a photo taken moments before the explosion, he begins to explore, very quietly, the unthinkable. Once he is certain, he must tell Meyer. Soon, the two are following a bloody trail leading them to Texas, and then Mexico. Cinnamon Skin will end deep in the Yucatán, in the jungle. Along the way the reader is privy to human pain and regret, and some of the most keenly drawn characters in the series. Cinnamon's narrative is sad and moving, with Meyer’s loss and need for revenge also his road to reclaim what he lost at the hands of Grizzel in Free Fall in Crimson. The story-line gives both McGee and Meyer an opportunity to ruminate on life and death, and the human condition. In addition, we get a wonderful piece of writing by McDonald from the feminine perspective, when he finds love letters Norma had written to Evan which cast a light on their relationship. Meyer is the one who eventually ruminates about Norma’s death, and a dream he’s been having, during a car ride with McGee:

“Death is an unending rerun until the last person with any memory of you is also dead.”

Once they begin backtracking the steps of Norma’s husband, they discover one sad ending after another. The trail leads McGee and Meyer to people touched by a man who is seemingly without conscience. But then Sergeant Paul Sigiera paints a picture even more disturbing; a terrible incident in the past may have lain the foundation for a man with more names than Elvis had hit singles, to become what he has now become. Always a gentle man, economist Meyer wants to at least understand the killer before bringing about justice, or even vengeance. But McGee has seen too much violence and death, and knows how dangerous that road can be. McGee is having none of it:

“You start with the assumption that everybody is peachy, and then something comes along and warps them. You start with a concept of goodness, and so what we are supposed to do as a society is understand why they turn sour. I start with the assumption that there is such a thing as evil which can exist without causation. The black heart which takes joy in being black.”

It is a description which certainly applies to the man they’re searching for, as McGee and Meyer con their way through friends and even relatives, to find him. The search itself provides poignant moments, and reflections from both men on the price paid for conning their way into someone’s life. Meyer reflects on such after one such visit has deadly, unexpected consequences:

“I feel very sad and soiled and old. She really hasn’t anything left.”

Out of their element, McGee knows he’ll need help, and finds it in the form of a beautiful woman of Mayan and Toltec lineage named Barbara Castillo. Barbara will enlist the help of Mayan natives as they trek through the jungle after an evil man with a friendly facade. By the time McGee and Meyer find ‘Evan’ it’s clear that both men were right in their psychological appraisal. Wonderfully informative moments about the Mayan culture are interwoven into the narrative by MacDonald. The author gives us not only a great story of retribution, but a look inward by McGee, as the tarnished knight comes to terms with what Annie wants, in contrast to what he’s able to give her:

“You have been living your life on your own terms. You need make only those concessions which please you. There are always funny friends, parties, beach girls, and the occasional dragon to go after. I don’t pretend to know the circumstances that shaped you. I would guess that at some time during your formative years there was an incident that gave you a distaste for most kinds of permanence.” — Friend/Lover Dr. Laura Honneker to Travis McGee

A great story with grounded psychological underpinnings, perceptive observations about society and the human condition, and tremendous atmosphere as it draws to an exciting conclusion, Cinnamon Skin is one of the finest novels in a long series so littered with them, it became one of the great sagas in American fiction. Highly recommended!

* As a footnote, if you’re wondering about the title of this one, it is in reference to Barbara Castillo, the lovely Mayan woman who helps McGee and Meyer track a killer — and has her own reasons for vengeance. But it is also a Spanish song made reference to in Cinnamon Skin. Here is a link to Eydie Gorme’s wonderful version of the song — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVNf_CfdamM show less

I knew I had read this book before, but didn't remember when, I thought it was much earlier in the 80s, so didn't expect to see it here on this list. First time I've read him in many years, and I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It has all the things I remember from the McGee books: every character, no matter how minor, gets their own story and real description, none are cardboard. McGee & Meyer are always making some general comment about the state of the world, some hold up better than others after 30 years, and there's plenty of action, though McGee is always more about figuring and manipulating character than using violence. This one had a great ending, a good story while they are tracking down the bad guy, and not enough show more Florida.

Update after 3rd reading: I didn't find the ending as satisfactory as I did earlier. show less

Random notes:
* MacDonald shows off his Harvard MBA here. He does this in other books, but for some reason it stands out here.
* McGee is reading Stephen King's Cujo and likes it a lot. This humanizes MacDonald a lot. Given McGee's strong opinions on everything, it's nice to know that MacDonald could appreciate Stephen King. Of course, Stephen King appreciated MacDonald, so perhaps he felt he had to return the favor.
* MacDonald also makes amazingly accurate predictions about how computers are going to affect our lives
* And, last but not least, Meyer explains the downside of timeshares!

The novel starts with a rather big bang. Someone blows up Meyer's boat. Luckily, he's not on board, but his niece and her new husband are. So, he and McGee show more set off to find the person or persons responsible. It's a long road that leads them to Houston, other parts of Texas, Utica (New York), and eventually Mexico, a place MacDonald loved to write about. It all goes on a bit too long, and there is way too much psychology involved (along with a lot of other talking), but overall, it's pretty satisfying, and the McGee-Meyer team is together for most of the book, which is always for the best. McGee's relationship with Annie from the previous book continues and takes up a lot of space as well. Not one of the best books in the series, but far far from the worst. show less

Although sometimes categorized as a mystery series, the McGee series may borrow some ideas from mysteries, but it is a series about as far from the standard PI genre as can be. McGee is not a PI. He’s a salvage consultant. When someone loses something of value and the normal lawful means of getting it back are not sufficient, he figures out how to outfox the conmen and tries to nets a fifty percent profit of the haul. He lives on a houseboat in the Bahai Mar Marina on the Florida Coast. Often, he confronts conmen, swindlers, and just mean ones, but he is about as unofficial and off-the-books as they come.

In this novel, trouble comes home to the Bahai Mar Marina and the John Maynard Keynes is blown up with three people on it and not show more enough left of anyone to bury. This is a story of a man with good looks and charm and wit who can sell anything to anyone and practically hypnotize any woman and when her accounts are cleaned out, he's gone without a trace. There's a trail of broken bodies and broken souls ranging across half the country and the trail is ice cold. There's no client in this one and very little left to salvage. --- just a battle with absolute evil in its most devilishly charming form.
Much of this story is about the investigation that McGee and Meyer take into the conman's troubled pasts and the ghosts they awaken as they try to nudge people's memories. Despite the fact that it may be more cerebral than action-oriented, It is a conpelling read from page one through to the end. This is MacDonald writing in his most carefully crafted, mature form. I really enjoyed this book. show less

Travis' friend Meyer still has not recovered from the trauma of almost being killed during one of Travis' last cases. To snap him out of his funk, Travis engineers a lecture trip to Toronto for him. Meanwhile, Meyer's niece shows up and he lets her stay on his boat while he is away and he has a friend take her and her new husband out on a fishing trip. On the outskirts of the harbour, the boat blows up killing all aboard.

Because a woman took a picture of Myers' boat moments before it exploded, Travis quickly notices that the husband was not on board. Meyer and Travis start a search for the husband which has them crossing the country following leads that show the husband has left a trail of dead women behind him. Eventually the trail show more leads to Mexico and with the help of the Cinnamon Girl they meet Evan Lawrence, the nieces husband, and together decide his fate.

This was a complicated case for Travis that MacDonald weaves into a plausible scenario that keeps the reader intrigued and reading. show less

"When Travis McGee's friend Meyer lent his boat to his niece, Norma, and her new husband Evan, he never dreamed he was signing their death warrant. For suddenly out in the waters of the Florida Keys, the boat was destroyed by an explosion. To all appearances only Norma, Evan and a crew member were aboard when it happened.
But Travis McGee begins to suspect it's not that simple. Is the Chilean underground responsible? Was the explosion connected to drugs? And why does it seem that Evan may not have been on the boat when it blew up? All good questions for the incomparable Travis McGee, who sets out to trap a very elusive and deadly killer." - Fawcett jacket notes
Dated, misogynistic, but an entertaining read on its own terms.

Perhaps MacDonalds Own aging is reflecting in Travis’s increasing reflection and uncertainty. The end of Myers boat the Keynes is an unexpected beginning. The puzzle and it’s working out are enjoyable. I’m sure I must have read it before. Probably I read it shortly after it came out but the details of the story didn’t seem familiar. Fans should enjoy it but recognize the evolving of McGee