Wednesday, August 10, 2022

Review: Free Fall in Crimson

Free Fall in Crimson Free Fall in Crimson by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I started off liking this 19th book in the Travis McGee series as it quickly delves into solving the mystery of why a guy dying of cancer gets beat to death at highway rest stop. McGee's investigation takes him to a biker bar run by an old war buddy in search of a lead, which he finds. And then he's off to Hollywood and Lyssa Dean, an actress he helped in The Quick Red Fox, to track down the Director and some bikers/actors from a biker-movie. She steers him to Iowa and the set of movie about hot air ballooning. After that it just felt like the energy left the book even though there is a formidable villain. The problem is we mostly hear about this bad ass second-hand, instead of seeing him live an in action. At least until the ending, where he shows up in the flesh. Doesn't have MacDonald's trademark rollercoaster sequence of climactic scenes as do so many of the McGee books. Instead we have a quick confrontation, with a partially recycled device from, I think, Bright Orange for the Shroud, and an older, wiser McGee (not a spoiler) survives again.

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