Plot or Premise

Sam Taggart is an old buddy of Travis McGee, and he swings back into town carrying a Mexican gold statue. There are more where this one came from, but they were taken from him, and he wants McGee to help him get them back. Before anything comes of the plan, Taggart is murdered. So McGee sets out to find the gold and, if he can, avenge his pal.

What I Liked and Didn’t Like

The story is somewhat unusual as a big part of the timeline takes place in a remote coastal area of Mexico with a small hotel, a nearby town, and some local houses. An out-of-the-way spot where you can avoid the hubbub and remain almost anonymous, if you wish. The remote location works well, and there’s some ongoing intrigue with a potential Cuban exile.

There’s a slightly repeated storyline from book 3, with someone getting fleeced, but it’s different enough not to cause too many problems. It is almost incidental to the issue of the gold. And to be honest, nearly ALL of it is incidental to the gold. There are a lot of things going on. So much so that when a big event happens about two-thirds of the way through the book, it feels like a finale.

Except that a whole third act takes place in L.A.; action, subterfuge, and new recruits to the team. And a somewhat violent episode. McGee doesn’t escape unscathed, taking physical and substantial emotional damage through the salvage operation.

I have a few niggly concerns about the ending, the way some things worked in Mexico, and even the way things unfold in L.A. Just enough to drop the rating down a level. But it is a “bigger” story than most of the McGee series, more ambitious, and it mostly delivers.

The Bottom Line

McGee goes international and gets involved in Cuban politics

Plot or Premise

A dancer, Chookie McCall, has a friend, Cathy, whose father might have had some buried World War II loot. A guy named Junior Allen seems to have found it and run off with it, and she has no way to get it back. So, Chookie introduces Cathy to her friend Travis to see if he can help.

What I Liked

The classic series of 21 books starts with this one, with all of the main elements of the series apparent in the first two chapters.

Travis McGee is taking his retirement in fits and starts, not waiting until he’s 60 to take it all at once. He lives aboard a houseboat he won in a card game, and specializes in difficult salvage, retrieving things other people have stolen or conned away from rightful owners who have no legal way to get it back. His usual fee for a successful recovery? 50% of anything recovered.

Junior Allen is a piece of work and delights in destroying women. In addition to stealing from Cathy and her family, he also moved into a house of a rich widow named Lois, and raped, abused and gaslit her into a puddle of a human. Travis manages to help her heal and get back on her feet while he goes after Junior. Some teens get involved as further victims, but in the end, Travis is mostly the smarter man.

What I Didn’t Like

Travis’ relations with women are always half-positive/half-negative. He always treats them relatively with respect, far ahead of his time, but his solution to most of their healing is hanging around his houseboat, enjoying the sun, until they have enough self-respect again to want to bed the knight who saved them. This story is a bit raw in places, more so than some of his later books. But it’s still an amazing story.

The Bottom Line

The legend begins with a busted flush