About book The Girl In The Plain Brown Wrapper (1996)
Travis McGee had a wonderful, spur of the moment, love with Helena after her husband tragically died. He was much younger than her and she wasn't looking for a new husband, just a good time. Which Travis was able to give her on his boat while taking her traveling. When she left after that summer of love, they kept in contact through mail, but never saw one another again. When Travis gets a letter from Helena telling him how she is terminally ill and how her eldest daughter is in a bad mental state since her second miscarriage he is shocked by how much the vital woman he knew so well and intimately is now so frail. He is out on a salvage job on his boat when Helena dies. When Travis gets home, he finds a letter from Helena's lawyer telling him he has been given $25,000 as a payment for a job he has done for her. The "job" is then described to him by her in a letter that came with the check. Helena wants Travis to help her daughter Maurie so she doesn't destroy herself. She has tried to commit suicide three times since her last miscarriage and Helena seems to think that Travis would be one that could get through to her and help her recover mentally from it all. What Travis finds after flying in to see the family that he once helped and loved is a scene that is more messed up than even Helena seemed to think it was. Is there more to Maurie's suicides than a depressed woman? As he is trying to make sense of the household she lives in he is almost killed by a couple who thinks he is there because of Maurie's husband Tom and his "business" ventures. This leads Travis to become friendly with the local cops and start an investigation of his own into the live of Tom. When he finds out about a link to a doctor who "committed suicide" with Tom, Travis is in way too deep to just turn and go home. He has to help find out what is going on. His feelings about helping only get stronger when the woman who tried to kill him is now murdered. What is going on in this messed up family and town? Did that doctor, who happened to be treating Maurie, really commit suicide like they say he did? Are the practices and medications being used on Maurie to "treat her mental disorders" really necessary and ethical? What has happened to this family that seemed so put together so many years ago? And can Travis really be of any help to any of them?I must say this book had a very slow and odd start to it. I almost put it down actually in those first chapters. I decided to push on though and I am glad that I did. It really turned into quite a good book with lots of mystery and things to think about as the plot thickened. I have read a few of the Travis McGee mysteries that were written after this book and I must say that my favorite part of any of them is the wonderful character of Travis McGee. He is a laid back kind of guy who just wants to help others in any way he can if he thinks he can. This is shown greatly in this book. He travels far from home and gets involved in a murder case and a dysfunctional family's affairs all because he was in love with the old mother of the family and because she asked him to help her family and daughters figure things out. The daughters of the late Helena are open to Travis being there to see them because they remember him helping them when their father died and remember that he was good friends with their Mom. Travis endures a lot in this book both physically and emotionally, but comes out the other end a new and better man. This book is well worth sticking with, no matter how the first chapters seem. After is gets moving it is full of family drama, action, adventure, murder, and mystery. I would recommend picking it up to read. The characters are great and the book/plot are very well developed.4/5 Stars!
If you were a rich widow who was dying from cancer and one of your two daughters, who had been stable and happily married for years, suddenly and mysteriously went bat shit crazy including memory loss and suicide attempts, would you:A) Pour all your money and remaining time into medical and psychological doctors to try and help while also setting up a safe and protected environment for her?B) Contact a shady stranger who you had a romantic fling with after your husband died and beg him to help her?Most people would probably pick option A, but I guess it would have been a pretty short book if the widow hadn't chosen option B.Travis McGee, the self-proclaimed salvage expert who specializes in getting back money and goods taken through scams, returns after spending weeks out on his boat and finds a letter from Helena, a woman he had helped years before and had a brief romance with. Helena is dying and asks Travis to check on her daughter Maureen who has gone completely nuts. Travis learns that Helena died before he got the letter, and even though he doubts there is anything he can do, he travels to see Maureen who is being cared for by her husband and sister.After visiting Maureen and talking with her family, Travis thinks she is being cared for as well as possible and is about to leave town. Before he can go, he gets sucked into a murder investigation of one of Maureen’s doctors. Does the murder have something to do with Maureen’s current condition?As always, you get an interesting character with McGee, and the mystery is intriguing, if a bit wonky. Unfortunately, the inherent sexism of these books written in the ‘60s is pretty awful. But this one is actually a bit better than the previous ones. Yes, every woman in the story is willing to submit to McGee’s wily charms at the drop of a hat, and none of them seem to have a problem that can’t be fixed with McGee’s patented brand of sexual healing. However, they seem a little less like scatter brained props and more like actual characters this time.
Do You like book The Girl In The Plain Brown Wrapper (1996)?
One of the early Travis McGee stories from the late 60’s, “Wrapper” (10th of 21) is a little unusual in that our hero receives a check to look into why a dying woman’s daughter keeps trying to commit suicide. Dutifully, Travis travels to that family to discover a tricky threesome of a disturbed woman, her nice sister, and her busy husband who has his hands into who knows what in the business community. Before it’s all over, murder and mayhem rain down, but of course McGee mostly solves all, bedding virtually every woman in sight along the way.We’ve said before we do not always understand why this series accumulated so much acclaim “back in the day”. We’ve threatened to quit it before, and maybe our resolve will hold this time.
—Jerry
Officially my least favorite so far. Most of the book matter consists of exhausting-to-wade-through expository dialogue which (even worse) is almost entirely between Trav and some small-town cop I never ever cared about or could differentiate from his colleagues. It's bad enough when MacDonald tries to write in the female noir voice (the exposition in which various fatale types--usually 2 or 3 per book--outline information about their victimization) but two anonymous white dudes talking about not nearly enough in outrageously boring diction just put me to sleep over and over. Skimmed to the end and am already MUCH happier with #11/Indigo, in which Trav and Meyer joyfully epater les bourgeois in Oaxaca; it makes me very nostalgic and happy as I remember winter days of delectable fish tacos and terrifying highway trips and the bizarre feast-and-famine architecture of Mexico. (Ye gods do I miss Baja.)
—JSA Lowe
Number ten in the series, this story finds McGee on an errand of mercy for an old lover who has lost her battle with cancer. He arrives in the apparent sleepy Florida Town of Fort Courtney, but all is not quite what it seems. There is something about the place that is a little off kilter, but by the time our sun bleached hero pieces together a jigsaw of murder and larceny, it is almost too late......A skilfull, well plotted crime thriller with everything you want from the genre, from the hands of one of the masters of the art.
—Mackenzie Brown
