Purple Place for Dying [Large Print] [Hardcover]

John D. MacDonald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1984

A PURPLE PLACE FOR DYING finds Travis McGee witness to a murder he can't prove and a kidnapping nobody wants to believe. McGee becomes a pawn between a wealthy Southwestern patriarch, the law, and a mysterious gang bent on insurance fraud. Just the kind of thing McGee revels in!

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

6 1-hour cassettes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap

2 cassettes / 3 hours
Read by Darren McGavin


"My favorite novelist of all time"
-Dean Koontz

"To diggers a thousand years from now . . . the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen."
-Kurt Vonnegut


Travis McGee is summoned to Arizona by a rich, beautiful arrogant woman.  And then she's dead - shot in the back at long range, lying crumpled on the ground at his feet.

With the would-be client eliminated, and on a dime's worth of fee in his pocket, any ordinary detective would walk away fast.  But Travis McGee is no ordinary detective. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: G. K. Hall & Company; Large type edition edition (May 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816136254
• ISBN-13: 978-0816136254
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,689,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great title, good book..., July 28, 2004

By 

Cynthia K. Robertson (beverly, new jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Purple Place for Dying (Travis McGee, No. 3) (Mass Market Paperback)

A Purple Place for Dying is the third book in John MacDonald's Travis McGee series, and McGee comes upon his most troubling case yet. McGee is brought to the Midwest by a big, brassy, bossy Blonde who needs help. Mona Yeoman suspects that her husband has pilfered her trust fund, and she wants a divorce. McGee's job is to find out what happened to the money. McGee doesn't particularly like Yeoman, but is tempted to take the case because he needs the money. But before he even has a chance to say yes, Mona is murdered right in front of his eyes, and this changes everything. What makes things even more mysterious is that her body disappears when the police are called to the scene of the crime.

McGee could simply take his return plane ticket and fly home to his native Florida. But for whatever reasons, he decides to stick around and do some snooping. There are many twists and turns and also a few more mysterious murders. As usual, McGee finds himself in danger the closer he comes to the truth. And the truth comes as a complete surprise.

Each MacDonald book gets better than the previous one. We also get to see McGee become more fleshed out as a character. Still, it seems that the early books in this series are more of a novella length, but MacDonald corrects this with later books.

Overall, the McGee series is a true gem, and I'm glad to have discovered these wonderful mysteries.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars McGee in a wild Southwestern adventure, August 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Purple Place for Dying (Travis McGee, No. 3) (Mass Market Paperback)

I've read that John D. MacDonald had 4 or 5 of the first McGee's written before he decided to publish them. As a result, these 1st novels in the series can be seen as experiments in developing a series character. In this, the 3rd or 4th published in the series, we see McGee in a situation as close as he will ever get to a classic mystery novel. Before he can be hired by Mona Fox Yeoman to free her and her money from the clutches of her husband Jass Yeoman, she's shot dead right in front of him by a desert sniper. -And the police won't start searching for a killer until McGee can prove she's dead. Seems her body disappeared while McGee was calling the police and she was always threatening to one away with her lover and weren't they spotted on a commercial flight getting away, and-. Eventually, Trav is looking for the killer for Jass, who may not be the tyrant that Mona described to McGee. McGee tracks down the true story, ending up unarmed against a pair of killers in the desert. Classic McGee with a "Ross Macdonald-ish" twist at the end as the solution becomes mired in the Yeoman past.

AS always MacDonald spins an enthralling tale.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Far from the sea, its the southwest for McGee, May 26, 2008

By 

Charles Calvert "charliecal" (Bellevue, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Purple Place for Dying (Travis McGee, No. 3) (Mass Market Paperback)

I admire all of John D. MacDonald's work, and certainly the Travis McGee series was his most powerful creation. Few, if any, popular mysteries are of such high quality.

Though this book is entertaining, and well crafted, it is not my favorite McGee. There are perhaps three reasons for this:

1) It follows the pattern of a standard mystery from the fifties or early sixties, and hence seems a bit derivative. I think MacDonald was experimenting with moving McGee away from his native habitat, perhaps to make use of a plot he had invented in other circumstances. I'm not sure the experiment was successful.

2) McGee is far from the water, and I think the sense of warmth and good will found in many of the other books in this series comes from MacDonald's love of the water in general, and Florida in particular. McGee was out of his habitat, and seemed a bit strained and depressed as a result.

3) McGee (and MacDonald) really don't like the female lead in the book very much, and one of the things that holds MacDonald's books together is the main character's and the author's obvious attraction and sympathy for women. Here the lead is prissy, overly intellectual, and distasteful to MacDonald and McGee. As a result, the book feels a bit sour, and lacking the good will and sense of joy found in the best of the other McGees.

Nevertheless, this is a Travis McGee book from the early sixties, a time when MacDonald was at the height of his remarkable powers. As such, it is not to be missed. I, however, will confess to having missed the Busted Flush, the sandy rumped sun bunnies, and the sleazy streets of Florida. A good book, but not at the top of my list of McGees. (I've read them all several times, a few of them many times.)