The Quick Red Fox

Marvelous entry in the Travis McGee series. Here the mystery is a seedy affair of illicit photos and blackmail. Lives will be lost and reputations put at risk but all that is just frosting. Baked into the cake underneath is the usual Travis McGee flair for character development and commentary that dances between romantic and dour. Writing in general often succumbs to the age it was written in and this series can be like a time capsule with a touch of mid 20th century American intolerance, but the quality of the material, the punchy eloquent prose keeps it’s head up. And ultimately, McGee’s aim is always towards personal freedom—while not hindering that of others. In this light, with the central mystery solved and in the show more background, the central relationship of the book takes it’s own turn—beautiful, poignant and just right. show less

I have to take a little off because the depiction of queer characters is just awful, not surprising for the time in which the book was written, but still ... The thing I really like about MacDonald is his way with words and his understanding of the human psyche. Both are on display in this novel, but the whole plot is a bit convoluted. McGee is hired by an actress who is being blackmailed with compromising photos to make the problem go away. Too many suspects. Too much back and forth on the road to a solution. As always, there is a romantic interest in the picture, the actress's assistant, and I did find that budding relationship compelling, but otherwise not my favorite of his.

One can almost feel sympathy for Travis McGee in this, the fourth of John MacDonald's series of novels about the character. This time he's trying to find out who is trying to blackmail a Hollywood star with some very nasty photographs taken during a drunken outdoor orgy. Perhaps sobered by the luridness of the whole thing (he is quite the moralist), he is on his best behavior. Best behavior for McGee may still include pretending to be a gang thug and threatening to kill someone in order to get information, or beating up a couple of lesbians who try to attack him, but if you have read the other books in the series, you'll still appreciate his softer side here. Of course, there are several damaged women thrown into the mix, and you don't show more need a PhD to figure out where that is going. And there are the usual MacDonald rants; this time he savages Phoenix, Las Vegas, and (with gleeful venom) San Francisco. So all the classic MacDonald elements are here and the pace never falters; you'll just breeze through it. I will say, however, that at this point in my reading of the MacDonald canon, the non-McGee books have a distinct edge in quality. show less

MacDonald is always sure to deliver an entertaining and well-crafted read, and The Quick Red Fox is no exception to that rule. Its plot involves a movie star of questionable character who contracts McGee to track down the individuals trying to blackmail her for her part in a drunken orgy.

As with any McGee novel, McGee takes a damaged lady and nurses her back to mental health with his tender masculinity and lots of sack time. And, of course, he (as the first person narrator) moralizes and pontificates about nearly everything that crosses his path. It would become tiring if McDonald wasn't so damned good at moralizing and pontificating. His diction and imagery and metaphors are spot on, and he weaves a very entertaining plot as Travis show more jets around the country trying to crack the mystery.

As one of the previous reviewers said, the McGee novels can get kind of formulaic, but I don't mind so much. You can put up with formulaic if the writing is good enough, and McDonald's writing is top-notch. show less

The Quick Red Fox is an excellent entry in John MacDonald’s lengthy Travis McGee private eye/caper series.

In this installment, McGee is hired by a Hollywood actress who’s been photographed surreptitiously in, ah, a seriously compromising situation. He joins forces with the actress’s personal assistant, the competent but smoldering Nora Holzer, tracking down the sorry people who also appeared in the photos. There’s much here to admire – sharp dialog, crisp description, surprisingly passionate romantic scenes – but it’s McGee himself who’s got top billing. He’s one of the great crime fiction creations – big, tough, canny, cruel, but also idealistic, emotionally perceptive and overall highly believable.

Highly recommended.

A beautiful youngish movie star seeks McGee's help in dealing with blackmail over some photos taken at an explicit -- and according to McGee -- disgusting event in a vacation home in Point Sur. She assigns her personal assistant to help McGee, and he tracks down all those (yes) in the photos to find out who took the pictures and who is doing the blackmailing. And of course McGee learns a bit about the personal assistant.

The mystery is good, the ending is very good. But maybe becuase I read two McGee novels back to back, I found a lot of McGee very tiresome, the way he looks down at most everyone who does not live his lifestyle, and his cliched pronouncements got very tiring. The several paragraphs about how San Francisco has gone down show more hill are very embarrassing (not for San Francisco but for MacDonald), as they contain no specifies and are just tiresome. And the same goes for a lot of them across the book. So: good mystery, good ending, but those pronouncements are very tiresome. show less

Great mystery filled with great characters with interesting motivations, including a host of bad people ranging from petty villainy to monstrous. Liked Travis McGee's jaded philosophy, the amount of detail put into even incidental characters, and the bittersweetness of the ending.