Why this book; I was looking for something “light” and fun to read, and I had enjoyed my previous two John D MacDonald-Travis McGee novels: A Purple Place for Dying and The Deep Blue Good-bye. I listened to Lemon Sky on audible.

Summary in 4 Sentences: Travis McGee, our laid back protagonist, gets a visit on his houseboat The Busted Flush from an old fling from 6 years ago who is in trouble and asks him to keep a LOT of cash for her (in exchange for a cut) but she won’t tell him anything about why or what trouble. But when he soon learns that she has been killed, by accident or suicide in a town up the coast in Florida, he feels there’s clearly something fishy going on. Before he gives the money to the young ladies sister, which is what she had demanded should anything happen to her, McGee and Meyer, his good friend (a sort of “Sancho Panza” to him) go to where she had lived, to try to uncover a bit of this mystery, and in the process, stumble onto a drug smuggling operation the lady had been involved in, and which involved a wide net, to include local political and other prominent figures. As he continues to pull the string, he stumbles upon several murders, is almost killed himself, and as he and Meyer put the pieces of the puzzle together, McGee himself had to decide how to handle a romance that he also stumbled into in the process.

My impressions: Travis McGee is an unemployed, easy going sailor who lives on a well appointed boat he’d won in a poker game, who works only when he needs money. This, like the other two John D. MacDonald novels I’ve read, has McGee minding his own business, doing whatever feels good and right, when out of the blue, a person shows up needing some help.

The other two novels were written in the late 1950s/early 1960s -this one 10 years later, so the context of South Florida had changed, in the aftermath of the turbulence of the 1960s. We see more itinerant youth, marijuana is widely used, cocaine is out there, but a more serious drug and doesn’t play a significant role in this novel.

Travis McGee is an appealing character as a laid back, mature man living in Southern Florida. Like MacDonald himself, McGee is a WW2 vet who’s seen and experienced evil, doesn’t like it but is not afraid of it. He isn’t greedy for money, treats women with respect, but is not immune to their charms and has a red-blooded appreciation for an intimate session with a beautiful woman, but doesn’t chase it and won’t compromise his values for it. Kind of like his attitude toward money.

He is also practical, sensible, and principled – willing to take risks for the right thing. He will confront liars, hypocrites and those he suspects are up to no good for their own perceived gain – and will come to the aid and assistance of victims of such bad guys – which he does in this short novel.

What I enjoy about McGee in this and in the previous Travis McGee novels, is that the MacDonald has him regularly digress and share his views on a variety of topics, and MacDonald uses him as a mouthpiece to share his world view with some very interesting and insightful comments on life, people, nature, the world, philosophy and more. MacDonald had lived through the depression, had degrees from Syracuse and Harvard, served with the OSS in the China-Burma-India theater in WW2, reaching the rank of LtCol, and after the war, he chose to become a writer. Through Travis McGee, he shares with us opinions, insights and prejudices, and some golden nuggets of wisdom, some serious, some clever and a bit cynical, especially about middle class consumerism, corporate greed, hypocrisy, and more. MacDonald, through McGee, is clearly a well educated and thoughtful man, and it is enjoyable to hear his views in McGee’s voice in the context of McGee’s adventures and misadventures.

I had read the previous two books – but in the audible version, I didn’t particularly care for the voice of the reader – Robert Petkoff. In my opinion, he made McGee sound a bit too much like a 1940s “tough guy” while I had imagined McGee as more of a tough guy with a deceptively mild mannered, easy going, nice guy demeanor. I checked and learned that after MacDonald died, which was before “books on tape” or audible versions became “a thing,” Petkoff had been selected by MacDonald’s estate to read all of the Travis McGee novels for audible.

Bottom line: This is the Travis McGee I got to know and enjoy in the previous two novels I had read. This time he’s having a different adventure in a different context. I enjoyed the writing and will again enjoy a book in this series as an escape from “heavier” fare, when I’m looking for well-educated, buy relatively light entertainment. Kind of like I enjoy watching the old Law and Order episodes on TV.