The Long Lavender Look

The Long Lavender Look, John D. MacDonald's twelfth Travis McGee novel, starts with one of his best scenes: McGee (and his friend Meyer) are driving down a rural Florida road when a woman runs across the road in front of them. McGee's swerves to avoid her, his car winds up in the swamp, and after he and Meyer limp back to the nearest town they find themselves suspected of murder (and more).

MacDonald's characterization is once again excellent -- not just of McGee but of his secondary characters too. Here is McGee's lawyer describing the small-town sheriff investigating McGee and Meyer (Norman Hyzer):

"He makes better sense when you know the whole pattern. Local boy. Hell of a high-school quarterback. Offers from all over the country. Picked one from Michigan. Did well, but not quick enough for the pros. Married a bright girl up there. Both of them became teachers. She taught speech. She worked on his accent, weeded it out. Both of them worked in the public school system in Rochester, New York. Hyzer's mother became ill, very ill, and Norman and his wife and baby daughter came down here. Hyzer's mother died. He was still here trying to get the house cleared out and put it up for sale when a couple of Miami kids in a stolen car knocked over one of those mini-markets on the edge of town in broad daylight, pistol-whipped the clerk, but suddenly had a cop cruiser riding up on them with the flasher going. They came through town at high speed and lost it on a turn and rode the sidewalk and smashed into a concrete power pole. It killed one of them and crippled the other. But they mashed Hyzer's bride and baby against the front of the post office thirty feet before they got to the pole. Killed them instantly. Hyzer buried them beside his mother and disappeared. Almost a year later he showed up here and announced for sheriff. No party affiliation. Independent. He won big. Sentimental favorite. Two years later he barely squeaked in, because he had done no glad-handing at all. Next time he won big because of his record. Lives for the job. Runs a taut ship. Keeps this county squeaky clean. No outside interests at all. If he is crazy, it is a productive compulsion. The rumor is that he has quietly built up files on every politician in the county, and they would rather not see anybody run against Hyzer. He takes correspondence courses. Law, criminology, ballistics, sociology, crime prevention, rehabilitation, penology."

And McGee has some good sections describing how he keeps his mind occupied in prison:

There had been a lot of waiting-time in my life. Sometimes it was cat-time, watching the mouse hole for all the endless dreary hours. Sometimes it had been mouse-time, waiting all the day through for the darkness and the time for running.

So you learn the special resources of both memory and imagination. You let the mind run through the old valleys, the back hills, and pastures of your long-ago years. You take an object. Roller skate. The kind from way back, that fastened to the shoes instead of coming with shoes attached. Look and feel and design of the skate key. With old worn shoes you turn the key too much and you start to buckle the sole of the shoe. Spin one wheel and listen to the ball-bearinged whir, and feel the gritty texture of the metal abraded by the sidewalks. Remember how slow and strange and awkward it felt to walk again, after all the long Saturday on skates, after going way to the other end of town. Remember the soreness where the strap bit into the top of your ankle. When it got too sore, you could stop and undo the strap and run it through the top laces of your shoe. Thick dark scab on the abraded knee. The sick-making smack of skull against sidewalk. Something about the other end of the skate key.... Of course! A hex wrench orifice that fit the nut on the bottom of the skate so you could expand it or contract it to fit the shoe. If you didn't tighten it enough, or if it worked loose, then the skate would stealthily lengthen, the clamps no longer fitting the edge of the shoe sole, and at some startling moment the next thrust would spin the skate around, and you either took one very nasty spill, or ended up coasting on the good skate, holding the other foot with dangling skate up in the air until you came to a place to sit down and get the key out and tighten everything again. Roller skate or sandbox or apple tree or cellar door. Playground swing or lumberyard or blackboard or kite string. Because that was when all the input was vivid.
All of it is still there. So you find a little door back there, and like Alice, you walk through it into the magic country, where each bright flash of memory illuminates yet another.

It doesn't work that way for everybody. Once I worked a stakeout for two months with a quiet little man. We were talked out after two days. But he seemed totally patient, totally content. After a month I asked him what he thought about. He said he was a rubber bridge addict. So mentally he would deal himself a random hand, then out of the thirty-nine cards left, deal a random hand to the opponent at his left, then to the one at his right, and give what was left to his partner. Then he would go through the bidding, the play of the cards, and mark the result on the running score-pad in his head. He said that sometimes when he was a little fatigued, he might forget whether the jack of diamonds had been dealt at his left or his right. Then he would have everybody throw their hands in and he would deal again.

The second half of the novel is a little uneven but overall this is another very good McGee novel.