Product Description

From the author of A Purple Place for Dying and The Deep Blue Good-by comes the republication of the bestseller starring Travis McGee, a real American hero. Reissue.


From the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1869795 in Books
• Published on: 1964
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

From the Publisher
6 1-hour cassettes

From the Inside Flap
From the author of A Purple Place for Dying and The Deep Blue Good-by comes the republication of the bestseller starring Travis McGee, a real American hero. Reissue.


From the Paperback edition.

About the Author
The complete Travis McGee series, by John D. MacDonald, is available from Random House AudioBooks.

Darren McGavin has appeared in numerous films, including The Natural, and on such television series as The Nightstalker and Murphy Brown, for which he won an Emmy Award.

Customer Reviews

Vintage McGee
Travis McGee is looking for blackmailers for a superstar actress. With her personal secretary at his side, Mcgee is combing the country for suspects who attended a sex party with the sex symbol that produced pictures of all the participants. Trouble is, all of the other suspects show up in hospitals or dead. Travis is left with a trail involving an original blackmailer and a copycat blackmailer. The last chapter which focuses on Trav, the secretary and the actress is probably one of the most satisfying single chapters in the McGee saga.

Cinematic McGee
Maybe it's because of the Hollywood commentary in this mcGee outing (Trav helps a vain movie star track down photos of her, taken during a drunken beach house sex party) but this jaunt seems like one of the most vivid, cinematic of the books.

Carefully detailed, pleasantly sordid and joltingly violent, "Quick Red Fox" is easy to imagine, on my mental movie screen, as directed by a period late noir helmsman like Robert Rossen ("The Hustler") or Robert Aldrich ("Kiss Me Deadly"), in crisp black-and-white Cinemascope with Paul Newman or Steve McQueen in the lead.

It's not as big in scale as some of the books, but it bobs and weaves in odd directions. Trav's confrontations with a prissy ski instructor; a pair of menacing, trailer park lesbians; and a spookily rendered German trophy wife may not be politically correct but they typify what's best and occasionally worst about MacDonald's style. McGee's warnings about women who kick for the crotch chafe against political correctness but make for one hilarious scene.

The first time I read it, I was pleased at how aburptly MacDonald wraps this one up. On a second reading, I thought perhaps it was a little anticlimactic but, in re-evaluating it, "Fox" ends economically and with a surpirsing level of sad tenderness. A good starting point for the uninitiated.

Classic Travis
Even though I still find "Flash of Green" to be my favorite MacDonald book, there's something so appealing about the Travis McGee series that keeps me coming back to them. The "Quick Red Fox" is a perfect example is why. It is well-paced and the central mystery is engrossing. The minor characters are all well-drawn and memorable. And, of course, it's Travis!

I hope that MacDonald continues to gain in popularity, as I feel he is horribly overlooked.