Pale Gray for Guilt/One Fearful Yellow Eye/Tan & Sandy Silence

Travis McGee #8, 9, 13

by John D. MacDonald

688 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1986

About the author

John D. MacDonald was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, and educated at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Syracuse and Harvard, where he took an MBA in 1939. During WW2, he rose to the rank of Colonel, and while serving in the Army and in the Far East, sent a short story to his wife for sale, successfully. He served in the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations. After the war, he decided to try writing for a year, to see if he could make a living. Over 500 short stories and 70 novels resulted, including 21 Travis McGee novels.

Following complications of an earlier heart bypass operation, MacDonald slipped into a coma on December 10 and died at age 70, on December 28, 1986, in St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was survived by his wife Dorothy (1911-1989) and a son, Maynard.

In the years since his death MacDonald has been praised by authors as diverse as Stephen King, Spider Robinson, Jimmy Buffett, Kingsley Amis and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.. Thirty-three years after his passing the Travis McGee novels are still in print.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was pretty average. I have read all 3 novels but only have notes for 2 of them.

Pale Grey for Guilt:

Not one of MacDonald's better works. This one has the feel of a story that is a bit thin of plot so some boiler-plating was added to stretch it out. I think MacDonald's works are better when there is a bit more mystery involved. The ending was pretty good and not expected. That was the highlight and I would be hard-pressed to come up with anything else. One problem was that Travis Mcgee is portrayed as a sort of vigalante con man rather than the soldier of fortune seen in many of the other stories. I prefer the soldier of fortune.

Tan & Sandy Silence:

Like most of the Travis McGee stories, this was more adventure than mystery. The actual story was a bit thin but it was fleshed out with McGee's musings and deeper than normal treatement of a lot of the chatacters. The bad guy was very bad but the author did not treat us to a fight between him and McGee. MacDonald does this a lot. Good on story and dialogue and character development but weak on the actual action. Oh well, it was still a pretty good story, one of the better ones. I give it a C+.