Book Review: A Deadly Shade of Gold
Read this book to see that Political Warfare directed against America is nothing new. Just the medium by which it is propagated.
A Deadly Shade of Gold has murder, Cuban refugees fleeing Castro’s regime, gold, treasure, right wing reactionaries refusing to accept Democracy as a good, Aztec antiquities. Beautiful women, and travels from Florida to New York City, ultimately landing in a picturesque Mexican seaside town help to weave a tale of the he-man Travis McGee as he unfolds chapter after chapter of the mystery surrounding the theft of the golden idols, and the deaths they cause through the story and the leads building to a foreign plot against America. The golden idols just whet the appetite. They aren’t the real mystery. That is revealed later in the story as the idols are merely a plaything for the villain who’s been causing all the mayhem.
Nothing is simple in a MacDonald story. There’s always someone grifting for profit or position. There are always pretty women that McGee seduces into the bedroom. This novel is no different. Travis McGee gets laid seemingly every chapter from four different women who all seem to find themselves either falling for his charms after a few well-placed drinks between compliments, or compliments between drinks. By today’s sensibilities the sex might be a bit ‘over the top’ but MacDonald wrote this in 1965 when the sexual revolution was beginning to peek into popular culture. Not that people weren’t having sex before the sixties. They were just never talking about it as much.
This is a big Travis McGee story. The book checks in at 387 pages where A Purple Place for Dying, The Deep Blue Goodbye, Nightmare in Pink, and The Quick Red Fox average 209. So, prepare yourself for a read. There is gun play, special operation force style reconnaissance missions, evidence discoveries using classic pretext tropes such as McGee posing as an antiquities dealer. All through the story though McGee soldiers on, indestructible, indomitable and far too sexy for any woman to bat his attentions away.
Layered into MacDonald’s tale are gems of commentary on the “Blame America first crowd” that are so uncommon in the adventure literature of today. Consider this statement found on page 307 “I ask you dear. Who takes the fifth [amendment]? Known hoodlums and fellow travelers.” Remind you of anyone in the news? Or this passage upon the discovery of a subversive plot against the United States: “My friend, any way they can make Americans hate Americans helps their cause…That is the heart of propaganda amigo, to strengthen ignorant terrible men who believe themselves to be perfect patriots.” That passage there could describe perhaps every single January 6th insurrectionist and quite a few candidates running in the midterms. That MacDonald spotted the threat of Russian directed political warfare as early as the Kennedy and Johnson eras speaks to the long game Russia has played to destabilize the US. In the sixties there was no internet, no social media. But now?
Copyright © 2022 Veronica Zerrer
