Dress Her in Indigo

Rating:
Summary: McGee and Meyer tour pre-Cancun Mexico
Review: A classic commentary on the 60s counterculture by John McD. A group of flower children are scattered across Mexico and have information concerning Bix Bowie's last days. As Meyer and McGee unravel the story, the gang starts dropping like flies. Several neat twists and a jawdropping finale. Reading this book brought back memories of old Dragnet and Adam-12 shows featuring the degenerate hippies. Trav gets more work in the bedroom than in any other I've read. Along the way he gets to pummel a homosexual AND a lesbian(not that there's anything OK with that, they just had it comin' to them).

Rating:
Summary: Vintage MacDonald
Review: It really doesn't matter which Travis McGee book you are reading because they are all so pleasureable that it is like slipping into a warm bath. They possess great narrative drive and a character that is at once bigger than life, self-deprecating, philosophical and all too human.

Travis Mcgee is a great figure in literature. Over the 20 years or so that MacDonald wrote these 21 novels(all with a color in the title and all with the title somewhere in the novel), McGee aged by about a year for every three that MacDonald wrote. His insights grew sharper, his cynicism and self loathing battled with his heroic life and his incredible pleasures. His reliance on his physical dexterity and strength diminished as his cunning increased.

The books were written between approximately 1964 to 1984. This particular book was written in 1969. Relatively early in the saga, and one of a handful taking place in Mexico. Most took place in South Florida where he lived on a houseboat. Where else could he live?

He went to Mexico to find out what happened to a friend's daughter. Traveling with his frequent companion, Meyer, he uncovers some sinister plot and we are introduced to some great memorable characters, and always fabulous women including Elena from Guadalahara and Becky, a sexual machine. Since it is the late 60's, you get to see the hippies in Mexico and McGee's relation to them.

The wonder and greatness of these books lies in the writing and the creation of a world and a being that you are lucky to tag along with during your time together.