The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

In outing number 10 of the series, McGee is at his most annoying. At the request of a former lover, dying of cancer, he heads out to see if he can help her daughter, who has tried to commit suicide three times. It is all downhill from there, in one of the most convoluted, depressing stories MacDonald ever wrote. McGee is insufferable in his absolute rightness in every word and deed, reinforced by other characters who can't help but offer effusive praise to his face. There is more sex than usual, giving MacDonald a chance to exercise the absolute worst of his writing style in describing the multiple couplings. Even the side trips and tangents into McGee's opinions are sub-standard here. We don't learn any useful self-defense techniques show more in defending ourselves from German Shepherds, for instance, although there is a good use for wadded-up paper. And there are all sorts of unnecessary details about brands of tape recorders and tape heads that need to be demagnetized and so on.

Being MacDonald, of course, it is still quite readable, although as the plot gets more and more byzantine and McGee has to spend several pages explaining it, it falls well short of providing the sort of grim pleasure that most of the first 9 McGees provide when the bad guys get their just desserts. And by now, shouldn't any woman know that sleeping with McGee is an immediate, or at least delayed, death sentence? This one also sorely misses the presence of Meyer, who at least provides another point of view and keeps Travis McGee from being the smartest person in the room all the time. I guess by this point in his career, no publisher would have the nerve to tell MacDonald to even consider doing a second draft! Disappointing. show less

Felt this was a weaker entry in the series; strained my disbelief too many times. The various drugs and medical devices might as well have been magic potions and spells, and the protagonist does a number of crazy irrational illegal actions that somehow work out. Nevertheless had fun reading it.

This is probably the best of McDonald's Travis McGee novels that I have read so far. The novel leads with a romantic affair McGee has with rich widow and friend Helena Trescott. Five years later from her death bed she asks Travis to check on her two daughters and make sure they are safe and especially the suicide prone younger daughter, Maurie.

This leads Travis into a mysterious and dangerous mystery on what is causing the youngest daughter to act so unpredictable. He is suspicious of Maurie's husband of whom almost everyone thinks highly but of whom Travis gets a bad feeling. There is also the suspicious death of Maurie's doctor and the murder of his nurse whom McGee had come to know and admire.

Fast moving story that was difficult to show more put done. show less

Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper is the tenth out of twenty-one Travis McGee novels. Although sometimes categorized as a mystery series, the McGee series may borrow some ideas from mysteries, but it is a series about as far from the standard PI genre as can be. McGee is not a PI. He’s a salvage consultant. When someone loses something of value and the normal lawful means of getting it back are not sufficient, he figures out how to outfox the conmen and nets a fifty percent profit of the haul. He lives on a houseboat in the Bahai Mar Marina on the Florida Coast. Often, he confronts conmen, swindlers, and just mean ones, but he is about as unofficial and off-the-books as they come.
This entry into the McGee legend follows some of the show more usual territory with an old flame looking up McGee and asking for his help, but there is nothing to salvage here, except perhaps a woman’s life. He’s asked by an old flame who he cruised with for a season after she was widowed and who has now died of cancer to look after one of her daughters, who is apparently suicidal. McGee isn’t sure how he can go about this, but looks into it and stumbles on a nest of intrigue and con games and blackmailers.

This novel has quite a bit less action than most the McGee books. Most of it is consumed with McGee sorting things out and logically deducing what is going on and who is who and what they want.
What’s really great about it isn’t necessarily the mystery so much as how MacDonald describes people so that, even if you haven’t met them, you know the type he is talking about. MacDonald has great instincts for understanding types of people and personalities and what makes them tick. show less

This 10th entry in the McGee series was fast-paced, a good suspense story. Even so, it only gets 3* as it didn't have the caustic wit MacDonald sometimes displays when commenting on social conditions. McGee seemed a bit off his game - maybe the absence of Meyer was the cause.

The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper is another strong entry in the McGee series. This time around McGee receives a letter from a woman whose died and she requests him to look into whats wrong with her daughter whose attempted suicide twice and see if he can help her somehow. Shortly after his arrival in Fort County Florida two people try to drug and search him and a chain of deaths soon follow.

Well paced with a good plot line although there are a few dated references throughout the novel which shows its age.

Finely written, if a tad poorly constructed, thriller set in a blamy inviting Florida in the far-off innocence, it now seems, of the 1960s mainstream.