Free Fall in Crimson

“People who become legends in their own time usually have very little time left.” — Travis McGee, Free Fall in Crimson


There is a reason John D. MacDonald is the favorite novelist of Dean Koontz, and Sue Grafton calls him a dominant influence on writers crafting a series character. There’s a reason Stephen King, Jonathan Kellerman and Mary Higgins Clark sing praises about his storytelling. It’s understandable why he’s the idol of Donald Westlake. Who could blame Ed McBain for being overjoyed when the Travis McGee series was once again back in print? It would have been shocking had Robert B. Parker not written that John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series was one of the greatest sagas in American fiction. They’re terrific show more writers, and they recognized the good stuff when they read it.

While MacDonald’s career goes much farther back than the Travis McGee series, and include some really outstanding pre-McGee crime fiction, the Travis McGee novels are most certainly the zenith of his legacy. In many ways, this fabulous series is the polar opposite of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series. Whereas the Spenser series eventually settled for being great entertainment as it moved forward through the years, Travis McGee just got better. When John D. MacDonald burned out, and wrote what he considered a clunker in the Travis McGee series, he took a break from it. When he returned to it, it was what I call a Sinatra moment. It is much like the famous story of Sinatra in Mexico, his smooth voice hemorrhaging, his career as a singer in jeopardy. When he recovered, the smoothness his voice had during the Big Band era was but an echo, replaced by a wonderful rich resonance. And that’s what happened to MacDonald’s McGee novels, which had always been terrific reads. McGee himself had matured to some degree, and MacDonald began dealing with life and mortality, and the price McGee had paid for living life on his own terms. The resonance would reach its zenith in The Lonely Silver Rain, which turned out to be goodbye for one of the great writers, and one of the greatest series protagonists in American fiction.

If you’re unfamiliar with McGee, or the basic premise of the series, McGee was not a detective, but a tarnished white knight, a tall, muscular beach bum who loved the beach bunnies, and lived on a houseboat in Fort Lauderdale he’d won in a card came — thus the boat’s name, Busted Flush. His adventures involved two types, but there were always women, remaining true to the genre. From time to time McGee did salvage work, recovering something which involved great danger or risk, and was generally believed lost without McGee’s help. His fee was exorbitant, and kept him solvent for long periods so that he could play the beach bum, live off the grid, on his own terms. The second type was helping out a friend. Sometimes the friend was male, a victim of some con or other, usually involving a woman somewhere underneath. Often, however, the catalyst was female, a wounded, damaged bird who needed McGee’s help. This gave birth to many tender moments, as well as some pulse-pounding action.

To hear the uber-sensitive PC knocks on this classic series, you’d think McGee was a lout, and a misogynist, because, you know, he appreciates the fairer sex, and doesn't act like a monk in a monastery when he sees one. That’s utterly ridiculous, especially considering the element is a very integral part of a genre MacDonald was being absolutely true to. If anything, MacDonald wrote McGee as too moralizing in regard to his intimate couplings, despite the fact that he was single, and residing on a boat moored in Lauderdale. These were real women, ones men could recognize from experience. They were good, bad, and everything in between, just like the men. They were not modern-day snowflakes. There were memorable women of low character, and strong and vital women like Gretal and Chookie and Anne. The good ones passed through McGee’s life all too briefly, for one reason or another. One of those women, in fact, hangs over this entry like a sad fog:

“Once in a great while, like once every fifty miles, I even got a look at a tiny slice of the Gulf of Mexico, way off to the right. And remembered bringing the Flush down this coast with Gretal aboard. And wished I could cry as easily as a child does.”

One of the most poignant moments in the series was a letter written to him by a long lost love and it reverberated back through many books in the series. It was terrific writing, and from a feminine viewpoint MacDonald was sensitive enough to tell it from. McGee enjoyed the opposite sex, but it was always mutual. Because the series began in the 1960s and endured until MacDonald died in the 1980s, there is some mild sexism, but that is all. MacDonald occasionally, in the early books especially, perhaps overemphasized McGee's ability to restore a wounded bird with his maleness. But that was the character, and the genre. McGee also grew as a human being over time as the series became more and more resonant.

Travis McGee was the prototype for Jack Reacher, who is a stripped down version of him. McGee lamented all the connections society tries to hoist upon us. He couldn’t live off the grid entirely, but he kept as much distance between himself and conformity, a paper trail, as he could, while still remaining a part of the world. The series is laced with social commentary, some of it concerning Florida, or Mexico, but often the world as a whole. Once the teddy bear-like economist, Meyer, became an integral part of the series, it became smarter, the observations on society and human nature more pointed — and deadly accurate in many cases. There was violence, even brutality, but not in your face, or there for shock value. When violence came, it was deadly and realistic, but not blood and guts. MacDonald, like Parker, had lines he wouldn’t cross. You’d never find a graphically described brutalization and rape of a child, told from three different viewpoints, as you might in crime fiction written by women nowadays — yes, women — whose victims are nearly always women or children, and the perpetrator invariably, of course, a man. When the story on occasion did lead to a horrific act, as it did in one particular entry in the series (Bright Orange for the Shroud) it was written in such a way that the reader felt agonizing sympathy and deep sadness, not horror and shock. MacDonald’s writing and stories had class, they weren’t crass. The same could be said of Robert B. Parker.

Free Fall in Crimson is one of the best books of the series, in my opinion, despite it being a bit more free-wheeling narratively than other entries. I wanted to review a few favorites first, before going back to the early ones and moving forward, so I began here. Free Fall in Crimson begins on an April night aboard the Busted Flush, as Ron Easterland asks McGee to help him look into the death of his father, Ellis Easterland. Riddled with cancer, he was beaten to death in Citrus City, apparently meeting someone. But who? There is a lot of money involved, an ex-wife — he had a string of them — and a young woman named Anne Renzetti, with whom the older Easterland had taken up. While Meyer sails off with lady friend Aggie Sloane for a romantic liaison, McGee pokes around and discovers that outlaw bikers who starred in a couple of low budget films may or may not be involved. That leads him to the director of those films, who is now shooting a film about hot air balloons in Iowa.

Anne Renzetti is quite different from what McGee thought, and their interaction is classic McGee. She’s just been embarrassingly jilted before she even got to first base, and decides to use McGee to get over it. He feels uneasy about it, not wanting to turn her down and hurt her further on the one hand, but not really wanting to go through with it on the other. So he shows up, and breathes a sigh of relief when the very nice Anne comes to her senses and changes her mind. Of course, once they spend a little time together, eating, talking, she changes her mind again, for different reasons, and McGee is much more amenable to the idea. Anne is only one of three strong females in this particular entry — four, if you count Lysa Dean. McGee’s initial encounter with Anne is the type of situation for which the series is frequently knocked by a few. However, if the same situation, the exact same circumstances, were told from Anne’s perspective, the same group knocking it would be completely cool with it. But we don’t hear it from Anne’s head, we hear it from McGee’s, who understands exactly what’s going on with her, and within limits, tries to do the right thing.

A lot happens before we get to Iowa and the really stellar part of this Travis McGee novel. McGee looks up old pal Ted Blaylock, who runs a biker joint. He’s a paraplegic running out of time, and he and McGee have a connection going back to their time in the war. This is where the second excellent female character enters the narrative, as a skinny half-Seminole girl named Mitt is very much in love with Ted, and has been taking care of him, helping run his place. There are some poignant moments derived from the situation, both Ted and Mitt wonderfully written by MacDonald. What happens and its aftermath, the fallout, connect later in the narrative when McGee needs backup.

Next we get to revisit the beautiful sex-pot, Lysa Dean, from The Quick Red Fox. If you’ve read the series like many of us, we last saw Lysa sliding across the floor on her keister where McGee put her, spurning the actress's aggressive advances — yep, McGee turned down more than a few in this series, but you never hear about that. In Free Fall, in fact, McGee laments that he’s always wanted more than just the fleeting connections, facing up to the wide swath he’s cut through the opposite sex over the years.

It’s like old times for Travis and Lysa — almost — but MacDonald has improved as a writer in the books between Quick Red Fox and Free Fall, and I find the Lysa Dean here a much better character now that she’s a bit older. She’s still Lysa, and you never know if she’s being real or playing a part, but she’s more mature, and you get a sense she’s more self-aware. MacDonald’s description of the Mexican designed house she lives in, and Lysa Dean herself, as she gets out of the pool and greets him after all those years, is a terrific piece of writing. It is a single paragraph that takes up the entire page in the version with the fabulous introduction by Carl Hiaasen. It’s marvelous, worth reading twice! And there are lovely passages later about the hot air balloons:

“We moved in silence, looking at the flat rich country. We heard the birdsongs, heard a chain saw in the woodlot, heard horses whinny. Children ran and waved at us. We crossed small country roads and once saw our reflection in a farm pond.”

Armed with a sham letter of introduction from Lysa, McGee heads to Rosedale Station, Iowa. He meets hostility, because the town is angry about director Kesner’s film, and how it’s affecting the town. But there is far more to it than that. McGee meets another great female character in Joya. She is the woman in charge of the hot air balloons. Mistaking McGee for a Fed, she reveals to McGee the horrific reason everyone is so hostile toward the film crew. McGee also discovers a formidable enemy, in one of the bikers who may or may not have been involved in Ellis Easterland’s death. But it may be what he’s involved in now that will be the catalyst for one of the best endings of the entire series.

The conclusion to Free Fall in Crimson to the main story-line is not a conclusion at all, but only a prelude to a brutal and sad ending for a lot of people we hoped would stay around. The prelude involves the hot air balloons, and a mob more frightening than the folks with torches in Frankenstein. The chase, some through the air, some on foot, and the casualties, is exciting, nearly heart-pounding. That sequence is some of the finest writing of the entire series. And that’s no easy feat, considering how many wonderful moments there are in the series — or how many there are just in Free Fall in Crimson. But if that’s the quake, then what happens next is the aftershocks. They keep coming, until Meyer’s life is forever changed.

Perhaps only Boone Waxwell in Bright Orange for the Shroud is a more dangerous adversary in the series. But even that’s not a sure call. McGee reflects on lost chances, poignant goodbyes, and MacDonald gives us some breathtakingly written passages of description. Plus Free Fall is a terrific story, with great movement within the narrative. As a minor caveat, it’s probably best not to ponder the plausibility of someone using the Krugerrand to broker a drug deal, and just enjoy the ride. It’s a ride on the wings of one of the greatest writers of fiction during the twentieth-century. I know friends who prefer his standalone novels, but some of John D. MacDonald’s best moments as a writer came in the Travis McGee series. It’s the kind of series that has a cumulative effect. Each entry is like a tile in a mosaic, each additional one adding color and story until the picture was complete. The picture is as complete as it will ever be, because unlike current trends, it ended with The Lonely Silver Rain. Someone had the class, and maybe the good sense, to realize no one could ever duplicate MacDonald’s voice. At least so far…

“Okay. Okay. Okay. But, by God, it seemed that an awful lot of people were into dying. The ‘in’ thing this year, apparently. No chance for practice. You had to do it right the first and only time you got to do it. And you were never quite certain when your chance was coming. Stay braced at all times.” show less

It's been six and a half years since I read and reviewed the 18th book in the series, and my delay wasn't caused by disappointment. The Green Ripper was one of the better books in the series and a distinct improvement over several of the volumes that preceded it.

McGee is still recovering from losing yet another lady love (in the Green Ripper) when he is asked to look into the murder of a terminally ill rich guy at a Florida rest stop. This leads into his involvement with small town policeman, Hollywood types, hot air balloonists, and most importantly, bikers. It all flows along nicely, and McGee isn't the bastard he can sometimes be. Meyer is on hand for a lot of the goings on, and that is always a plus. McGee, of course, gets over his show more grief enough to find a beautiful, independent woman to bed down with. But as always, there are murders and awful happenings galore. A world like the one MacDonald writes about would be pretty unliveable.

There are no important life lessons here, like how to defend yourself from a killer dog who is charging you or how to get rid of crabs. Instead, MacDonald (and McGee) are at their most philisophical. It appears they were both mellowing with age, and I guess that's a good thing, although knowing that MacDonald only had 5 more years to live when this was published is rather sad.

In any case, this one is sordid but solid. Recommended. show less

The set up of the mystery was interesting, but the protagonist was unusually passive in this installment. Stuff just happened around McGee rather than him making things happen; the girl picks him just because he's nearby when she gets jilted by another, he inherits a business kind of randomly, and the antagonists get defeated without much action on his part. This made the story somewhat unsatisfying. However, the details of hot air ballooning and the associated action sequence were fun.

In Free Fall in Crimson we have a dead millionaire, biker gangs, a hollywood movie set, pornography ring and Travis realising he's getting older and isn't as nimble as he previously was.

We commence the tale with the millionaires son coming to Travis to investigate his fathers mysterious death at a roadside rest stop far from his home and from there he slowly becomes tangled up in other schemes.

One of the better books of the series, everything since Tan and Sandy Silence has been good to really good and this one was no exception. Plot lines wound up well at the end and overall there was a good pace to the story line and a few throw backs to earlier books which is always a nice touch.

A solid entry in the McGee series. Not as much social commentary as in some of the previous books but also missing is the slightly offensive remarks about women & sex that sometimes appear; that is a trade-off I can live with!

Travis is approached by the estrange son of a murdered millionaire to find out who killed him. As Travis investigates, he finds himself involved with motorcycle gangs and movie makers who it turns out are jointly making porn films using local high school kids from rural Iowa where the movie is being made. Things get dangerous when locals attack the film set and Travis gets the blame resulting in a motorcycle gang member eliminating anyone he feels destroyed the film with Travis as his final victim. The ending is violent but Travis gets his lady and lives to work on another case.

Review: Free Fall In Crimson by John D. MacDonald.

This is the first book I read written by this author. I read up on the author and realized I was about to read the 19th book in the Travis McGee Series. I knew it was an older book and it was given to me and I found it an enlightening mystery. It was fast paced and would make a great beach read. This was a detective investigation that traveled from FT. Lauderdale, Florida, than on to Beverly Hills and a stop in Roseland, Iowa that involved a murder, issues of corruption and a hot air balloon competition.

Mr. Esterland was wealthy, despicable and slowly dying of cancer until someone decided to beat him to death at a Florida truck stop. The reason could have something to do with show more Esterland’s multimillion Estate. After two years Esterland’s son Ron, who was disowned years ago came back and asked Travis McGee to help find out who conveniently committed the murder and why Ellis’s Esterland Estate ended up in the hands of ex-wife Josie and her male friend. Ellis’s comatose daughter was to inherit his Estate however, conveniently she also died within two weeks after her father’s death.

The instruction in the will about the daughter’s inheritance had a clause attached explaining where the money should go if his daughter died before him. Somehow, Ellis’s ex-wife got the inheritance and ran off to Iowa to make a movie about hot air balloons and her male friend unknown to her, was making porno films with underage girls in the same area after the crew went home. The money was also being laundered to keep himself on top of things but his life style was costing him a lot and he was losing more money then gaining….He was thinking that things were going happen to turn things around….

During this time McGee already found out how the ex-wife got the inheritance and now was searching for the killer of the old man by following the money trail between Hollywood and Iowa….The story started out good and then half way through it just went downhill….. show less