Showing results by author "John D. MacDonald" in All Categories

Hero of The Dreadful Lemon Sky is Travis McGee, a man of universal interest and independent means who lives on an old houseboat he won in a poker game. One evening a young woman shows up with a suitcase full of cash. McGee agrees to be bagman.She tells him what to do if she doesn't return. When she doesn't, McGee is left alone to deal with an intrigue that involves drugs, fear, passion, and death.

He's a self-described beach bum who won his houseboat in a card game. He's also a knight errant who's wary of credit cards, retirement benefits, political parties, mortgages, and television. He only works when his cash runs out, and his rule is simple: he'll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half.

This time out, McGee comes close to losing his status as a living legend when he agrees to track down the killers who brutally murdered an ailing millionaire. For starters, he renews an unfinished adventure with a famous - and oversexed - Hollywood actress, who leads him into a very nasty nest of murderers involving a motorcycle gang, pornographic movies, and mad balloonists. And McGee relearns the old lesson - that only when he comes close to the edge of death does he feel he completely alive.

When Travis McGee's friend Meyer lent his boat to his niece Norma and her new husband Evan, the boat exploded out in the waters of the Florida Keys. Travis McGee thinks it's no accident, and clues lead him to ponder possibilities of drugs and also to wonder where Evan was when his wife was killed.

A Purple Place for Dying finds Travis McGee witness to a murder he can't prove and a kidnapping nobody wants to believe. McGee becomes a pawn between a wealthy Southwestern patriarch, the law, and a mysterious gang bent on insurance fraud. Just the kind of thing McGee revels in!

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by the magazine.

A classic novel by John D. MacDonald with an exclusive introduction written and read by Dean Koontz. Ex-cop Cliff Bartells might be the last honest man in Florence City, Florida. After quitting the force over a crisis of conscience, he takes a job at an insurance company buying back stolen jewelry. Cliff is focused on keeping the bottom line down and staying out of the spotlight.But when an affluent tourist from Boston is murdered over a hefty collection of jewelry, Cliff finds himself wrapped up in a case that’s making national headlines.

It was the standard blackmail scheme. For years, sultry Lysa Dean's name on a movie had meant a bonanza at the box office. Now a set of pictures could mean the end of her career.When first approached for help by lovely Dana Holtzer, Lysa's personal secretary, Travis McGee is thoroughly turned off by the tacky details. But being low on cash, and tenderly attracted by the star's intriguingly remote secretary, McGee sets out to locate his suspects -- only to find that they start turning up dead!

A wealthy old man laid up in the hospital is desperate to understand the last months of his daughter's life before she was killed in a car crash in Mexico. It was puzzling. She'd cleaned out her considerable bank account, left Miami and hadn't been heard from again. Travis McGee ventures into the steep hills and strange backwoods of Oaxaca through a bizarre world of dropouts, drug freaks, and kinky rich people - and begins to suspect the beautiful girl's death was no accident.

The classic John D. MacDonald thriller about a Korean War vet searching for a stolen fortune in a small town. Our edition comes with two excellent bonus essays, a biography of John D. MacDonald, and an exploration of the paperback revolution of the mid-20th century.

When McGee picks up the phone and hears a voice from the past, he can't help it. He has to meddle. Especially when he has the chance to reunite Sam Taggart, a reckless, restless man like himself, with the woman who's still waiting for him. But what begins as a simple matchmaking scheme soon becomes a bloody chase that takes McGee to Mexico, a beautiful country - and one from which he hopes to return alive.

A classic novel by John D. MacDonald with an exclusive introduction written and read by Dean Koontz. Once an ordinary math teacher, Omar Krepps developed a knack for gambling, amassed a fabulous fortune, and spent the rest of his life traveling the world and giving away his millions. Upon his death, however, Krepps bequeaths nothing to his nephew and only living blood relative, Kirby Winter - nothing, that is, except an antique watch and a sealed letter to be opened after one year. But Kirby has much more in his possession than he realizes. The watch has the power to manipulate time.

Her veneer was big city...but one look and you knew Toni Raselle's instincts were straight out of the river shack from where she came. I watched her as she toyed with the man, laughing, her tumbled hair like raw blue-black silk, her brown shoulders bare. Eyes deep-set, a girl with a gypsy look. So this was the girl I had risked my life to find. This was the girl who was going to lead me to a buried fortune in stolen loot.

A lovely young girl steps in front of Travis McGee's headlights. McGee misses the girl but lands in 10 feet of swamp water. As he's limping along the deserted road, someone in an old truck takes a few shots at him. And, when he goes to the local sheriff to complain, the intrepid Travis McGee finds himself arrested and charged with murder. And he can't help but ask himself, "is this what they call southern hospitality?"

How to you extort $600,000 from a dying man? Someone had done it very quietly and skilfully to the husband of Travis McGee's ex-girlfriend. McGee flies to Chicago to help untangle the mess and discovers that, although Dr. Fortner Geis had led an exemplary life, there were those who'd take advantage of one "indiscretion" and bring down the whole family. McGee also discovers he likes a few members of the family far too much to let that happen....

Now that Linda "Pidge" Lewellen is grown up, she tells Travis McGee, once her girlhood idol, that either she's going crazy or Howie, her affable ex-jock of a husband, is trying to kill her. McGee checks things out, and gives Pidge the all clear. But when Pidge and Howie sail away to kiss and make up, McGee has second thoughts. If only he can get to Pidge before he has time for any more thinking.

A classic novel by John D. MacDonald with an exclusive introduction written and read by Dean Koontz. A Flash of Green tells the gripping story of small-town corruption and two people brave enough to fight back, featuring many of the themes John D. MacDonald explored better than anyone in his legendary career as a leading crime novelist. The opportunists have taken over Palm City. Silent and deadly, like the snakes that infest the nearby swamps, they lay hidden from view, waiting for the right moment to strike. Political subterfuge has already eased the residents toward selling out.

A classic novel by John D. MacDonald with an exclusive introduction written and read by Dean Koontz. A college graduate and amateur fisherman, Andy McClintock is stuck toiling in the office of a construction company. But when Andy tries to quit, his boss offers him a promotion and a raise - and then promptly kills himself with a harpoon gun. At least, that's what it looks like, until the police rule it homicide - with the murder weapon belonging to Andy.

A classic novel by John D. MacDonald with an exclusive introduction written and read by Dean Koontz. Floyd Hubbard arrives at a convention at a busy beach-town hotel with a mission from the top brass: ax a long-time manager in the sales team who has been slacking off for too long. Hubbard’s a loyal company man, but his background is engineering, not cold-blooded corporate warfare. Little does Hubbard realize that the first grenade has already been lobbed - and he’s the target.Cory Barlund has heard more than her fair share of odd requests in her years as a high-class call girl, so this one’s right up her alley...

Nina - a career girl living alone in Manhattan - offers Travis McGee companionship and the first loose thread in the elaborate fabric of a gigantic swindle. Now, she's leading McGee on a wild and tortuous chase into the decadent world of high society, the ruthless world of big money, and the weird world of hallucinatory drugs.