Nightmare in Pink

Mike Gibson was an Army buddy of Travia McGee's when they both served in Korea. Mike was blinded and otherwise injured and is in a VA hospital. He gives McGee a call and asks for a favor: his sister's fiancé was mugged and died, and he wants Travis to help her out.

Travis will do anything for his old friend and heads off to New York City. Travis is taking his retirement a little at a time. He takes a job when he needs some money and then retires until he needs funds again. He's a sort of knight errant in tarnished armor. He'll help someone who needs him in exchange for half of what he recovers.

Nina Gibson has some questions about her fiancé. After his death, she finds $10 thousand in a shoe box and doesn't know how he came by the show more money. As Travis begins to look he discovers a complex financial scheme going on. Some con artists are taking a wealthy guy for millions which means that Travis might have gotten in over his head.

Travis stumbles into trouble and finds himself in a hospital where illegal experiments are going on. He's been dosed with an LSD-like potion and learns that the wealthy guy had had the same thing done to him before he had a lobotomy.

He manages to get out, leaving a trail of bodies behind him, and gains a bit paycheck from the wealthy guy's wife. He also gets the girl - at least temporarily.

Travis McGee is a character I first met in 1972 when I was riding Greyhound busses between graduate school and my hometown. He was an interesting sort of hero. He has a strong moral center, but it isn't conventional morality. His attitude toward women reads more than a little chauvinistic at a 50 year remove. But still, if a person is in really bad trouble, Travis McGee would still be my choice of a hero to call upon.

I enjoyed this walk down memory lane. The narration was well done. show less

I did not like John D. MacDonald's Nightmare in Pink. Women throw themselves at Travis McGee, but he only says yes to the young, sad ones. Turns their lives around!

McGee analyses every female character from the perspective of, "Would I like to sleep with her?" His deliberations take up too much space that would be better used for character development and plot. This book is sexist, overwrought and sentimental. The plot is laughable.

Didn't like reading McGee out of Florida and certainly didn't like him in an insane asylum. But his reflections, cynicism, and indirect descriptions of sex were there, well developed in this second novel in the series. Always thought of as a Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, Don Quixote was brought in via a long, self-critical, go for broke paragraph at the end of the story. Great ending with McGee nursing, the beginning of many, women back to health in the Florida sun.

A really excellent crime novel. The mystery is one thing, but it's McGee's wry observations on life and human relationships that really impressed me. Superbly readable, it's thrilling, funny, insightful, and has an amazing twist half way through.

This is a terrific novel, just a tiny notch below 5 stars and I give 5 stars to next to nothing. MacDonald's writing is near perfection.

The insect experts have learned how it works with locusts. Until locust population reaches a certain density, they all act like any grasshoppers. When the, critical point is reached, they turn savage and swarm, and try to eat the world. We're nearing a critical point. One day soon two strangers will bump into each other at high won in the middle of New York. But this time they won't snarl and go on. They will stop and stare and then leap at each others' throats in a dreadful silence. The infection will spread outward from that point. Old ladies will crack skulls with their deadly handbags. Cars will show more plunge down the crowded sidewalks. Drivers will be torn out of their cars and stomped. It will spread to all the huge cities of the world, and by dawn of the next day there will be a horrid silence of sprawled bodies and tumbled vehicles, gutted buildings and a few wisps of smoke. And through that silence will prowl a few, a very few of the most powerful ones, ragged and bloody, slowly tracking each other down.

I can only think of the pervasive zombie genre and wonder if this is what makes it so popular.

Even the villains of the piece have interesting things to say.

"I read a great deal. It's the only way we have to lead more lives than one."

Me too, I can be an astronaut in the morning, a deep sea diver in the afternoon, and a vampire in the evening or Travis the kinght is rusty armor, anytime during a sleepless night.

re-read
Favorite quote "I read a great deal. It's the only way we have to lead more lives than one."

Character List

MacDonald, John D Nightmare in Pink (Travis McGee #2)

Characters

Travis McGee - MC
Nina Gibson. She blue-black curls, Mike's blue blue eyes, small defiant face, skin like cream.
Mike Gibson - brother MC friend, war buddy, guilt
Howard Plummer is dead, fiance "A standard mugging that went wrong."
Freddie - co-worker
Mr. Charles McKewn Armister, quiet, gentle, careful, dull Howard Plummer was stealing from him
he is living with his lawyer and his secretary
Joanna Howlan he married
Delancy Drummond his sister-in-law. Joanna's elder sister a charming earthy bawd,
Mr. King. had wire glasses, a tall forehead and a deferential manner.
Sergeant T. Rassko, man who had worked the case
Robert Imber worked in the Trust Department of a Fifth Avenue bank.
Armister-Hawes. It used to be, years ago. It was an investment banking house
married Elena Garrett
Mr. Lucius Penerra, head of the accounting staff,
Mr. Baynard Mulligan, head of the legal staff,
Constance Trimble Thatcher, age about seventy-two.











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An old war buddy, now paralyzed and blind in a North Carolina Veterans Hospital, asks McGee to look into the death of his younger sister's fiancee, who left a large sum of money of mysterious origin. The first two-thirds of the story are more about McGee's philosophy of women, sex, love, architecture, and whatever else he ruminates on--with the emphasis on his analysis of the female psyche. It is all more than a bit tiring and you wonder when the story is going to pick up. Then it jerks itself into motion and the last third of the book is a drug-induced roller coaster that saves the novel from failure.

After two rounds with McGee, I can honestly say that he is a true bastard, despite his occasional good deeds. He succeeds as a hero in show more this book and in the Deep Blue Goodbye (the first novel in the series) because he is butting heads with folks who are much bigger bastards than he is -- child molesters, white collar criminals, and lobotomists, just to name a few (sometimes the categories overlap). I wonder if the remainder of the series will continue to be as dark and depressing as the first two. show less

Like all Travis McGee novels, "Nightmare in Pink" spins a yarn about the consumate boat bum as he undertakes yet another adventure to right the wrongs of a crooked society--for a modest fee, of course. This time the story centers around a batch of high-rise con artists who use LSD and lobotomies to carry out their crimes.

The first half of the book consists mostly of legwork and wordy ruminations on the crummy state of the female psyche and the crummy state of the world in general. It would be tiresome if McDonald wasn't so darn good at it. His prose is nothing if not elegant. Some might be turned off by the way the narrative at times devolves into an internal monologue from McGee, but when it's done with adequate skill I don't show more particularly mind.

And as in all McGee novels, the man uses his awesome powers of lovemaking to take a damaged woman or two and nurse them back to mental health. If you don't have much experience with John D. MacDonald's works, you probably won't be bothered by it. If you're a MacDonald veteran it can get a bit old hat, but the rest of the novel more than makes up for it.

The meat of the story--and where MacDonald does some of his best writing--occurs when McGee is falsely imprisoned within a mental hospital. I'll spare you the spoilers, but suffice to say that MacDonald's descriptions of trippy drug experiences and mental hospital horror are well worth the price of admission. The ending isn't surprising, but the author skillfully maneuvers the plot such that it's still a fun ride. show less