Last of the great Travis McGee series by the great John D. McDonald. Enjoyed them all! ( )

Not sure if this was published post humously or not. I even wondered if it been written earlier in the series and saved for the last McGee. It has the expected adventures and womanizing but it is filled with more than the usual dose of introspection which os to day a lot. It does end with an element suggesting a sequel with a segue into a different kind of partnership.
I have re read most of the McGee stories by listening to them as audio books. But the last few only became available recently. I’m sure I read this when it was published. I may even have the hard bound. I have to check.
A lot of cutting comments about the drug trade in Miami, something MacDonald must have abhorred. He does make a pressing reference to legalizing the drug trade. ( )

The last book in the Travis McGee series. Written in 1985 and he died a short time later. This book reveals that he has a daughter and she shows up at the end of the book in an unusual way. Her appearance has nothing to do with the plot of the book which was a good one. ( )

This was the last novel in the McGee series as MacDonald died a year after it was published. The plot finds Travis hired to find a stolen yacht for his friend Billy Ingraham. He quickly does locate it partially hidden in mangrove on an island. He takes a boat and goes to see what shape it is in only to find it contains four dead bodies in advanced state of decomposition. Noting that the dead had been tortured before they were killed, McGee clears out and anonymously reports it to the coast guard as he knows the killers are part of the drug trade.

One of the dead is the niece of a drug lord in Peru and he puts out a contract on McGee and Ingraham because he thinks McGee did the murders. After several near misses from assassins, McGee seeks to get the facts to the drug cartel. Eventually he discovers who did the murders and he puts their names in the rumour mill which starts a major killing spree among the drug dealers.

Meanwhile, cats made out of different coloured pipe cleaners keep appearing in his houseboat. Looking for a clue as what they mean, he comes up empty. Eventually he captures the person leaving them and discovers she is a daughter he did not know he had fathered with the now deceased Puss Killian. This opens a new future for McGee which MacDonald never had the chance to pursue. ( )

A good way to end the series... ( )