The sixth book in the Travis McGee series finds our hero taken aback by the sudden reappearance of an old friend, and absolutely shocked by his change in appearance. The last time McGee saw grocery-fortune heir Arthur Wilkinson was at his wedding. McGee didn’t approve of the match and his suspicions have been proved correct, as the bride has lured poor Arthur into a phony real-estate scam and absconded with nearly every last penny.
McGee agrees to try to recoup as much of the money as he can, but he can’t do that and nurse Arthur back to life. So he brings along professional nightclub dancer Chookie McCall, simultaneously hoping the sweet-natured Arthur will help her get over her on-again/off-again ex-con ex. This unlikely trio boards McGee’s trusty boat, The Busted Flush, and heads for the Everglades.
At their best, the Travis McGee books are classic crime fiction, full of twists and surprises, and made memorable by Macdonald’s unusual sense of humor. At their worst, they devolve into he-man wish fulfillment action adventures, where McGee becomes an unconquerable hero, faster, stronger and smarter than all others, as well as irresistible to women. All of the books include McGee’s extemporaneous moral philosophizing on the issues of the day and the various ways in which the world and the people in it are going to hell, but in the better books these asides are just little breaks from the action, whereas here they stop the narrative dead in its tracks as McGee, and perhaps by extension Macdonald, expounds on sex and what women want. It’s a little nauseating.
The story isn’t intriguing enough to outweigh the negatives. There’s no whodunit here, no cleverness at all really. The victim shows up, says, these are the bad guys, go get them. And that’s exactly what McGee does, with some mortal dangers along the way.
I’m not reading this series in order, so I know that there are better books than this both before it and after it in the series. I guess I’ll just have to put up with the occasional stinker.