Travis McGee: 10 - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper (udgave 1968)

This is probably the best of McDonald's Travis McGee novels that I have read so far. The novel leads with a romantic affair McGee has with rich widow and friend Helena Trescott. Five years later from her death bed she asks Travis to check on her two daughters and make sure they are safe and especially the suicide prone younger daughter, Maurie.

This leads Travis into a mysterious and dangerous mystery on what is causing the youngest daughter to act so unpredictable. He is suspicious of Maurie's husband of whom almost everyone thinks highly but of whom Travis gets a bad feeling. There is also the suspicious death of Maurie's doctor and the murder of his nurse whom McGee had come to know and admire.

Fast moving story that was difficult to put done. ( )

Another good MacDonald thriller. Fun read. ( )

Travis has an affair with older woman. She is later asking him to look into the health of her daughter. Her two daughters or under the spell of the man she married. Travis was unaware of her death because of a selvage event. The husband wants the family fortune. ( )

Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper is the tenth out of twenty-one Travis McGee novels. Although sometimes categorized as a mystery series, the McGee series may borrow some ideas from mysteries, but it is a series about as far from the standard PI genre as can be. McGee is not a PI. He’s a salvage consultant. When someone loses something of value and the normal lawful means of getting it back are not sufficient, he figures out how to outfox the conmen and nets a fifty percent profit of the haul. He lives on a houseboat in the Bahai Mar Marina on the Florida Coast. Often, he confronts conmen, swindlers, and just mean ones, but he is about as unofficial and off-the-books as they come.
This entry into the McGee legend follows some of the usual territory with an old flame looking up McGee and asking for his help, but there is nothing to salvage here, except perhaps a woman’s life. He’s asked by an old flame who he cruised with for a season after she was widowed and who has now died of cancer to look after one of her daughters, who is apparently suicidal. McGee isn’t sure how he can go about this, but looks into it and stumbles on a nest of intrigue and con games and blackmailers.

This novel has quite a bit less action than most the McGee books. Most of it is consumed with McGee sorting things out and logically deducing what is going on and who is who and what they want.
What’s really great about it isn’t necessarily the mystery so much as how MacDonald describes people so that, even if you haven’t met them, you know the type he is talking about. MacDonald has great instincts for understanding types of people and personalities and what makes them tick. ( )

The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper is another strong entry in the McGee series. This time around McGee receives a letter from a woman whose died and she requests him to look into whats wrong with her daughter whose attempted suicide twice and see if he can help her somehow. Shortly after his arrival in Fort County Florida two people try to drug and search him and a chain of deaths soon follow.

Well paced with a good plot line although there are a few dated references throughout the novel which shows its age. ( )