The Quick Red Fox : A Travis McGee Novel (Audio Cassette)

In this installment of the 21-episode series, McGee finds himself in Hollywood, helping out some friends and trying to solve the murder of Lysa Dean, a super starlet sex symbol, some very unseedy characters, and lots of blackmail!

As the "Sunday Telegraph" wrote, "...MacDonald stirs in a touch of Oedipus trouble, a touch of alcoholism, and a touch of lesbianism, and gives his engaging private investigator, Travis McGee, some straightforward enjoyment as well." In this no-holds barred book, the reader's view of humanity is not white-washed (MacDonald never does this) and the greed, lust, jealousy of humanity's detritus are never more vividly depicted.

That is not to say, however, that there aren't bright spots in the book. For one, McGee, whom Time magazine calls a "knight in tarnished armor," does not disappoint us. Sometimes, it appears as if he's the only level-headed, sane person in the story. MacDonald's first-person accounting of the McGee stories never get in the way and as one follows the series' progression, one is able to see the goodness that McGee personifies.

The first book in this series is titled "The Deep Blue Good-by" and ends with "The Lonely Silver Rain," pubished shortly before MacDonald died. Each of the McGee books is characterized by having a color in the title, not that Travis needs any help being colorful. He seems able to do that on his own!

A mutual screenwriter friend in San Francisco, one of two real male friends Lysa has, recommends Travis to her to resolve a very sordid blackmail problem: after wrapping a movie a year and a half before, she'd taken three weeks holiday with a now-departed boyfriend who, apparently out of spontaneous boredom, brought in several casual acquaintances of both sexes for fun and games, which a month later turned up in a series of very candid anonymous photographs.

Lysa paid off the anonymous photographer at the time, her reputation for professional reliability being a little too precarious and her conservative fiancee being *far* too rich for her to risk either by sending hired muscle after the blackmailer. But now a set of copies of the photos have begun turning up in Lysa's mail with threats that suggest a potential sexual predator has gotten hold of a set of prints and created new negatives, and that Lysa's life as well as her reputation may be at stake this time.

Travis' job is to find the blackmailer and account for all the photographs and negatives rather than to protect Lysa, who is *not* the female lead this time out. (Travis has a streak of the prude in him.) Instead, Lysa's confidential secretary/personal assistant, Dana Holtzer, is assigned to accompany Travis, assist, and monitor the situation. Travis misreads Dana at first as a repressed prude not worth his respect and is set firmly straight to his great embarrassment; she knows a *lot* more about some kinds of tragedy than he does.

Yet another fine example of Travis' adventures as a knight in tarnished armour; not only is Ms. Dean a far-from-innocent lady fair, but Dana has some very complicated issues herself, though of a more wholesome variety. Travis comes to respect Dana as being worth at least ten of her employer.

The story is a kind of morality tale, in a way, as Travis tracks down the other players in that orgy in the land of eternal summer and finds a trail of broken relationships and torn-apart lives, each tragedy apparently unrelated to the rest save that the kind of people who'd be involved in that sordid holiday might be expected to come to grief. Each is an interesting and individual problem, apart from the puzzle of how the blackmailer happened upon Lysa's indiscretion and why a second set of photos has now turned up.

Points of interest:
- Lysa turns up years later in FREE FALL IN CRIMSON with a separate problem and further information about how certain events played out.
- MacDonald does *not* turn Travis' cynical insight loose upon the Hollywood culture in general, but there's plenty of philosophical musing along the way.
- Meyer is mentioned in passing, but doesn't actually appear in a book until DARKER THAN AMBER, to the best of my recollection.
- Interesting photographer friend of Travis' is introduced in passing as a consultant.
- Rather negative portrayal of some female homosexual/bisexual characters herein may offend some readers.