From 1964 to 1985 a World War II veteran officer and Harvard MBA named John D. MacDonald published a series of 21 remarkable short crime novels centered on a “Florida beach bum” named Travis McGee. Travis, of course, was MacDonald’s alter ego, with an incisive mind, a head for business, and a literary flair unmatched by few. And though he lived on the beach in a houseboat at Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale, he was no bum. Styling himself a “salvage consultant,” he would rouse himself to take on clients only when his cash ran low. For them, he would attempt to recover stolen funds that often involved elaborate financial swindles—for 50 percent of what he recovered. Naturally, every case poses a challenge, and it’s often life-threatening. Which proves to be even more convincingly the case in the third thriller in the series, A Purple Place for Dying.
She wants him to steal her money back from her husband
A wealthy woman in Arizona named Mona Yeoman has flown Travis at her expense from his home in Florida to offer him a job. She’s in love with a poor, young college professor named John Webb and wants a divorce her husband, Jasper (“Jass”) Yeoman, won’t allow. And she’s convinced Jass is looting her trust fund. He’s decades older, a crusty, self-made man who’s at the top of the heap in the region. She wants Travis to steal her money back so she can run away with the love of her life. Travis is inclined to turn her down and fly back to Florida.
Suddenly, Mona drops dead of a rifle shot to her back outside the cabin where they’re talking. But Travis then discovers that whoever shot her has stolen the car they drove up into the hills. It takes him hours to reach a phone. So, by the time he summons the police to the scene, her body has disappeared. With no corpse and no proof a crime occurred, McGee himself becomes a prime suspect. And then things get much worse.
A Purple Place for Dying (Travis McGee #3 of 21) by John D. MacDonald (1964) 241 pages ★★★★★
What’s happening here
With only $80 in his pocket from Mona Yeoman’s purse, and with no client and no fee, McGee reluctantly sets out to solve the murder. He’s in an impossible spot. There’s no corpse, and the easy assumption around Esmeralda County is that she has run off with the professor. Worse, everyone including Jass Yeoman, is convinced that McGee is helping cover up the couple’s disappearance. And then Sheriff Buckelberry discovers that a man and woman matching their description had boarded a plane to El Paso right after the murder. But Travis is in luck.
The sheriff is no potbellied good-ol’-boy of the stereotype. In fact, he turns out to be a good cop. And when Travis turns up evidence that the couple on that plane were not, in fact, Mona and John, Buckelberry starts to bend. Travis then turns to the professor’s sister, who had lived with him. And from her he discovers that John was a diabetic. Someone had cleared out John’s closet while she was at work but failed to take along his insulin. Clearly, whoever it was wanted it to look like he’d run off voluntarily. The sheriff is now convinced even if Jass continues to believe that Mona is alive and will soon return to him.
More bodies turn up
Meanwhile, Travis begins to dig into the Yeomans’ tangled finances and Jass’ relationships with other powerful locals. As he contacts others with knowledge about Jass’ financial affairs, he learns more details about how and why the old man cleaned out her trust fund. It soon becomes clear that the killing was no crime of passion. It was, in fact, part of an elaborate, calculated scheme to conceal large-scale financial theft. Then, on a tip from Travis, Buckelberry discovers lung tissue belonging to Mona at the crime scene (matching her blood type). Which confirms she was shot dead there.
Now, even Jass is convinced his wife is dead. He hires Travis to find out who killed her. And he even admits to plundering her father’s estate and fathering illegitimate children over the years. Travis concludes Jass may not be the tyrant Mona described. It certainly seems clear that the old man didn’t arrange the murder.
Soon, however, the tale becomes even messier, as more murders surface. And Travis’ investigation ranges more widely still, as new suspects emerge. It all ends a grisly, violent reckoning as Travis finally exposes the truth behind Mona’s death.
About the author
Six decades after John D. MacDonald published the first of his Travis McGee novels, readers still thrill to his inventive prose and masterful plotting. The 21 novels of the series represent one of the most outstanding representatives of America’s post-World-War turn toward books and films that deal with life as it really was. And they were wildly popular in their time. MacDonald sold an estimated 70 million books during his lifetime. Today, they’re classics. But they remain eminently readable. MacDonald’s prose is deeply engaging.
As Sarasota History Alive! posted online, Dean Koontz calls MacDonald his all-time favorite writer. Stephen King thinks he’s the great entertainer of our age. Carl Hiassen says he was the “first modern writer to nail Florida dead-center, to capture all its languid sleaze, racy sense of promise and breath-grabbing beauty.”
For related reading
So far, I’ve also reviewed the first two books in this series:
- The Deep Blue Good-By (Suspense authors look to this classic thriller series as a model)
- Nightmare in Pink (Travis McGee stumbles into a massive financial fraud)
You’ll find other great reading at:
- Top 10 mystery and thriller series
- 10 top novels about private detectives
- 20 excellent standalone mysteries and thrillers
- Top 20 suspenseful detective novels
And you can always find the most popular of my 2,400 reviews, and the most recent ones, on the Home Page.
