Finished: MacDonald’s ‘Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper’

I’m a late-comer to him but finally getting around to knocking off some John D. MacDonald paperbacks. So far so good. He writes some fascinating stuff with unique plots that are out of the mainstream detective novels.

I don’t know if I’m ready to go as far as Jonathan Kellerman though, who says: “The Travis McGee novels are among the finest works of fiction ever penned by an American author.” But they've got my attention.

In The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper:

He had done a big favor for her husband, then for the lady herself. Now she’s dead, and Travis McGee finds that Helena Pearson Trescott had one last request of him: to find out why her beautiful daughter Maureen keeps trying to kill herself. But what can a devil-may-care beach bum do for a young troubled mind?

McGee makes his way to the prosperous town of Fort Courtney, Florida, where he realizes pretty quickly that something’s just not right. Not only has Maureen’s doctor killed herself, but a string of murders and suicides are piling up—and no one seems to have any answers.

Just when it seems that things can’t get any stranger, McGee becomes the lead suspect in the murder of a local nurse. As if Maureen didn’t have enough problems, the man on a mission to save her will have to save himself first—before time runs out.

This was written in 1968 so it’s not at all politically correct, which may be why I find it so refreshing.

Goodreaders give it a 4 of 5. I gave it a 6-plus of 10.