Cinnamon Skin begins in a land of nervous tension. Travis is even in a kinship with Annie Renzetti, although she's making noises about putting her "career" over her "beach-bum boyfriend who doesn't need to commit". Meyer is incredibly shaken up around the end of Free Fall. Essentially, Travis didn't clue Meyer in to the fact that he had a small legion of biker assassins on-side, so as events unfolded, Meyer felt that a) he had betrayed Travis and b) was certainly going to die.
As the opening quote states, that'll break a man.
In-between half-heartedly sorting out his own relationship issues, Travis tries to prod Meyer back to his normal, vibrant self. Everything fails until, horrifically, Meyer's niece (his sole remaining relative) and nephew are blown up in a terrorist attack - one seemingly aimed at Meyer. Where the gentle(ish) affection of Travis has failed, the clarion call to sue has succeeded: Meyer is Unleashed.
Happy to chuck the softly-softly crap, Travis locks, loads and joins Meyer on the warpath. What follows is a very traditional Travis McGee scavenger hunt. The villain is identified pretty rapidly (Evan, the nephew, is a bad, bad egg), but Meyer insists on really knowing him inside out before (presumably) turning him inside out. The two amigos bounce around the wilds of Texas, digging advance and further into Evan's life until they take the golden truth. Once they've fully understand his dickishness (and he's fully dickish), they take off to Mexico to wrap things up for good.
Concluding an adventure in Mexico is familiar basis for the series. As with previous episodes, MacDonald paints Mexico as a county with a thin veneer of imported civilisation - painted on top of a deep, restless well of aboriginal culture. Except when he stumbles, this doesn't come across aspatronizing(just slightly imperialist). In Cinnamon Skin, for example, MacDonald paints the historic glories of the Mayans with a broad brush - and talks lovingly about the brilliant indigienous culture, growingly increasingly dense with the inflow of inexpensive American condo salesmen. Still, when it comes down to it - if you need to kill someone in a JDM and hold no questions afterwards, it inevitably to occur in a) the Everglades or b) Mexico.
Even the dramatic conclusion - the mandatory mano-y-mano between Travis and an equally hyper-masculine enemy - is traditional fare. Except, again, we get the interposition of Meyer. Travis is happily trudging through the jungle, beautiful woman by his side, machete at his hip - ready to defend against the odds against a sinister foe. And there's Meyer, stumbling beside him with a comedy shotgun and an ill-fitting baseball cap. And there's Meyer again, while Travis is pinned down under fire, saving the day...
Although Cinnamon Skin connects to the old books in surface details (the author of Meyer's issues, Travis' soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend), it mostly feels like a pleasant throwback to Travis' earlier, more self-contained adventures. Meyer, long suffering in Travis' shadow, needed an escapade of his own and it is fun to catch him solve "people problems" that would have otherwise swamped the shag-or-smack McGee. Travis doesn't leave empty-handed, of course - following Annie's inevitable departure (type 3!), he's left to the tender mercies of Barbara, the incongruously-named Mayan beauty. (She's also sticking around at the end of the book, so only time will say if she's still there for the inevitable break-up and/or explosion at the beginning of The Lonely Silver Rain.)
(This is the 20th review inThe Endless Rainbow Snark, a request to take all the Travis McGee books in order.)
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