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Rating: 
Summary: Good Old Storytelling at its Best
Review: A boat blows up coming into harbor in the Florida Keys. Within hours a Chilean Terrorist group claims responsibility for planting the bomb with intent to kill the famed economist Dr. Meyer. Private Detective Travis McGee is suspicious and tracks Meyer -- a good friend -- down and finds he was in fact, not aboard the ill-fated boat.Photographs from a nearby boat reveal that a man Evan Lawrence also may not have been aboard the boat. Lawrence recently married Meyer's niece, and when McGee's suspicions seem confirmed, the two friends (he and Meyer) begin a hunt to find out about Evan Lawrence's past. Thus begins Cinnamon Skin, a taut, fun mystery thriller that leads two friends through the criminal past that formed a killer. Some of the most deft touches in the novel come when MacDonald describes the lives of people along the Rio Grande Valley in southwest Texas. At one point, I actually got out a road map and traced their quest from Eagle Pass to El Paso and back all the way to Brownsville. MacDonald blends fact with fiction at just the right pitch in this, his twentieth Travis McGee novel. MacDonald writes like a writer who has earned it, man. He seems to know his story so well, there is very little drift in the way he tells a story. Each sentence is exact or darn near exact, and the end result is a taut mystery that is very fun and very entertaining -- the kind of novel you'll want to talk about with friends. I highly recommend Cinnamon Skin to folks who like good old storytelling at its best, most genuine form. It is the perfect airplane, poolside, vacation novel to help you beat the heat this summer. And its depth will leave you feeling satisfied at any time of year. Good stuff. Please hit the "helpful" button if you found this review helpful. I like to know you care. Stacey
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Summary: Simply The Best
Review: As a mystery writer making the convention circuit as my debut novel is in initial release, I find that John D. MacDonald's name frequently comes up in discussions with readers and authors. While Travis McGee is always Travis McGee, I always contend that CINNAMON SKIN is the best work in MacDonald's colorful series. Meyer's niece is killed and our gentlemen adventurers hunt down the woman's killer. They end up in the jungles of Mexico, Mayan Country. That final detail is important, and you have to read the book to find out why.
Rating: 
Summary: Classic McGee - on a mission for a friend
Review: For McGee afficionados, this is a must read. Travis is in classic form, driven to avenge the wrongful death of the niece of his closest friend, Meyer. Tracking down the killer by digging into his past is the best part of this book. About 2/3rds of the way through it, I said to myself, "this is definitely a five star book." However, the story gets bogged down in Mexico as McGee waits out the perfect opportunity to trap his prey. I felt like there were about two or three too many chapters written after Travis/Meyer's arrival to Cancun. As a side story, Travis is again torn between his woman of the book, versus his beach bum lifestyle, as she takes takes a career progression move out of Florida. Will he move with her? Of course not, John D. MacDonald wasn't finished with Travis yet. Never fear, McGee couldn't come out alone at the end, could he?
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Summary: Gets better with age
Review: If there's anywhere I'd rather go with Travis McGee other than Florida, it's Mexico. John D. MacDonald dives into the country's culture and landscape in "Cinnamon Skin" with his patented combination of cynicism, idealism, lechery and expertly rendered action, and you'll be really glad you came along for the ride.
"Cinnamon" is one of the later books in the series, and finds Travis and Meyer a little the worse for wear, time and loss having taken a toll. Travis starts the book by losing yet another good woman, and Meyer's still traumatized by events in the book before. That's what makes this series so great--the author's willingness to bring us along as his characters age, suffer and make mistakes.
I'm a younger, female reader, but have yet to find any mystery writer working today who even comes close to MacDonald. Basically, when I need a mystery fix, I'm more likely to re-read one of these than bother with the hacks that clutter the best-seller lists. Warm thanks to the publishers who brought out these spiffy new editions--even though a big part of the fun of discovering MacDonald is stumbling across the tattered original paperbacks with 1970s reciepts used as bookmarks and "Valley of the Dolls"-like babes on the covers.
Enjoy, and don't waste any more time on the inferior imitations!
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Summary: Meyer Takes The Lead
Review: In the last few Travis McGee novels, MacDonald focuses more than before on McGee's close friend Meyer. CINNAMON SKIN is a story in which Meyer takes the lead. He has to fight the demons of his past cowardice and also avenge the death of his niece. CINNAMON SKIN is one of the very best entries in the McGee series.
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Summary: MacDonald's BEST "Travis McGee" Mystery Novel?
Review: It wouldn't take much of an argument to convince me that CINNAMON SKIN is the best -- or at least one of the best few -- of the fine "color-titled" Travis McGee mystery novel series by prolific John D. MacDonald (author of CAPE FEAR, etc.). This actually is at least two novels in one, as Trav and best-friend Meyer first travel America (mostly the Texas-area Southwest) ferreting out the murderous past of a serial killer -- then track him to his current lair in the Cancun-Yucatan area of Mexico and lay a dangerous jungle trap for him there. VERY highly recommended for fascinating characters (good and bad), local color, and tense action. Of course, as with all JDM's work and especially the McGee series, CINNAMON is well-crafted and written. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: MacDonald's BEST "Travis McGee" Mystery Novel?
Review: It wouldn't take much of an argument to convince me that CINNAMON SKIN is the best -- or at least one of the best few -- of the fine "color-titled" Travis McGee mystery novel series by prolific John D. MacDonald (author of CAPE FEAR, etc.). This actually is at least two novels in one, as Trav and best-friend Meyer first travel America (mostly the Texas-area Southwest) ferreting out the murderous past of a serial killer -- then track him to his current lair in the Cancun-Yucatan area of Mexico and lay a dangerous jungle trap for him there. VERY highly recommended for fascinating characters (good and bad), local color, and tense action. Of course, as with all JDM's work and especially the McGee series, CINNAMON is well-crafted and written. Enjoy!
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Summary: a good mystery
Review: John D. MacDonald's 20th Travis McGee book "Cinnamon Skin" reads as well today as it did when published in 1982. It is one of the very few books I have ever re-read and it was refreshing to find that it is just as exciting, just as relevant today as it was when I first read it. In "Cinnamon Skin," we find Meyer's newly-wed niece Norma and her husband being murdered aboard Meyer's boat "The John Maynard Keynes"--and, of course, the circumstances are suspicious. Was the explosion at sea revenge for a drug deal gone wrong? Did it have something to do with Meyer's own past (after all, he'd been in Chile a few years earlier)? Regardless, it is greatly disturbing to Meyer who enlists his friend Travis to help. Meyer's loss is Travis', after all, Travis is rough and tough but philosophic,and the ensuing McGee adventure takes the two on a convulted odyssey from Ft. Lauderdale to Texas to Mexico. MacDonald holds us spellbound with his plot revelations, but he is also a master at capturing the local color (especially noteworthy here is his interesting "history" of Cancun), and of sparking his suspense with daubs of humor. MacDonald's works frequently touch on socially significant issues, such as the environment, and especially on the damages that developers have been plying on the Florida coast, from shabby construction to irresponsible waste disposal. He likes to remind us that we are, after all, in the 20th century. "Soon the bosses of the microcomputer revolution will sell us preprogrammed units for each household which (will provide for everything). It will be the biggest revolution of all, bigger than the wheel, bigger than Franklin's kite, bigger than paper towels." In his many books, sometimes MacDonald seems to assume the role of Cassandra outside the gates of Thebes, crying out his revelations and prophesies, yet he is doomed not to be believed. Tis a pity. "Cinnamon Skin" carries, brilliantly, the MacDonald/McGee mystique, and while the series is over thirty years old, the colors in the titles have not faded; Travis is as relevant today as he has always been. MacDonald's prose--if nothing else-- will transport the reader on a magical, mystical, enthusiastic ride, well worth the fare. Take a trip to Lauderdale--it'll be a treat.
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Summary: The last book in the Travis McGee series.
Review: This is the last book in the Travis McGee series written shortly before McDonald died. Although it has all the classic elements of earlier works in the series, it lacks the emotional punch which made many of the earlier books stand out from the detective genre crowd. McGee and Meyer travel to the Yucatan in pursuit of a typically malevolent villian who has wronged a beautiful woman with "cinnamon skin". The character development is up to McDonald's usual high standards, complete with the requisite philosophical flights of Travis' balanced against Meyer's earth-rooted reasoning. In an unusual twist, it is actually Meyer who overcomes the bad guy in the final scene which takes place deep in the Mexican jungle. If you have been a fan of the McGee series, all of which contained a color in their titles, this story will not disappoint you. In fact, reading it alongside one of the early (1950's) Travis McGee books offers some fascinating insights into McDonald's personal development as his hero acquires the politically correct attitudes of the decade. It has been rumored for years that there was a final McGee novel with the color black in the title in which the aging hero dies. Some have even speculated that "Spenser" author Robert B. Parker was working to complete the unfinished McDonald manuscript. True McGee (and McDonald) fans will be glad neither has materialized. Closing with this book, and never being heard from again, is a far more appropriate ending to a pair of long and storied careers
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