"Travis McGee Series" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald John D)

A TAN AND SANDY SILENCE - 1972

We get a revealing and disturbing bottom-up view of the tourism economy in Caribbean countries. There's also some interesting stuff here about the business of "condo-dam-nization". (For a very thorough look at the Florida condo business, from developers to realtors to the retired folks who live in these things, read MacDonald's CONDOMINIUM an excellent tale which was huge bestseller.)

Mary Dillon Broll had once been close to Travis, and now the jerk she married shows up, shooting off his gun and his mouth, demanding to know the whereabouts of his missing wife. He wants her back, and he also needs her signature on a real estate deal. Meyer gets involved and unravels some multiple-layered financial schemes. Travis, suspecting the worst, follows Mary's trail to the island of Grenada where he runs into more trouble than any normal mortal could realistically survive. The main villan is a psychosexual fiend lurking around, making sudden appearances, and leaving a trail of dead bodies and damaged women.

The second plot line involves a very determined and well-preserved rich widow named Lady Jillian, who likes to pick and choose from among the local beach hunks, and can't comprehend that "no" is Travis's answer. .




THE SCARLET RUSE - 1973

Have you ever wanted to learn about the stamp trading business? Neither did Travis, but it turns out to be quite interesting. Hirsh Fedderman, a stamp dealer friend of Meyer's, has a strange problem; someone has switched a lot of good merchandise for garbage, and no one can figure out how. The raided collection belongs to an important underworld figure, adding another dimension of awkwardness to the situation.

We meet a new member of the McGee Regulars in Willy Nucci, a sardonically amusing hotelman with good connections in low places. Whenever Travis needs to find out something about the the local underworld and their methods, Willy is his reluctant tutor. There's also a Columbo-style cop named Goodbread who's not as dumb and lazy as he puts on.

Mary Alice, Hirsh's loyal employee, is just Travis's type - six foot tall and awesomely athletic. McGee is smitten until he figures out why he shouldn't be. While recovering from the kind of serious pounding he gets near the end of most of these stories, Travis is lovingly nursed back to life by old friend Cathy Kerr, whom he helped in THE DEEP BLUE GOODBYE.




THE TURQUOISE LAMENT - 1974

This is the first Travis McGee published in hardback, and MacDonald covers lots of new ground here. Travis goes diving for sunken treasure in the Bay of La Paz, takes a quick trip to Honolulu, and ends up in Pago Pago to foil a murder.

Photographer Gabe Marchman uncovers some shocking evidence, and Meyer makes astute analytical contributions.

The author gets a chance to hold forth about the various effects of air conditioning, and warn about the growing prevalance of oceanic pollution.




THE DREADFUL LEMON SKY - 1975

Travis, that 6'4" physical fellow, preferred women who were about six feet tall and good outdoors as well as in. This time around it's handsome Cindy Birdsong, owner of a marina in the (fictitious) Florida gulf city of Bayside, who's determined to carry on after her husband's suspicious death.

A woman from the past appears and gives Travis $94,000 of unexplained money to hold for her, plus $10,000 for himself. She gets killed in an unlikely "accident", and Travis and Meyer set out to find out why. The quest leads them through the marijuana smuggling industry and into a swinging singles subculture (MacDonald is very good at observing subcultures).

Our villain is Fast Freddy, an up-and-coming young lawyer with slick moves and a serious sexual exploitation hobby. Undeterred by Freddy's gamey reputation, the local downtown operators who have strip-mining and real estate development in mind, are fashioning a political career for him. There is also an amusing example of the cynical cop genre in Captain Harry Max Scorf, walking the tightrope between professionalism and political reality.




THE EMPTY COPPER SEA - 1978

The prolific output is slipping - MacDonald let three years go by before coming out with this one.