Customer Reviews

The Quick Red Fox

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Travis McGee is looking for blackmailers for a superstar actress. With her personal secretary at his side, Mcgee is combing the country for suspects who attended a sex party with the sex symbol that produced pictures of all the participants. Trouble is, all of the other suspects show up in hospitals or dead. Travis is left with a trail involving an original blackmailer and a copycat blackmailer. The last chapter which focuses on Trav, the secretary and the actress is probably one of the most satisfying single chapters in the McGee saga.

Maybe it's because of the Hollywood commentary in this mcGee outing (Trav helps a vain movie star track down photos of her, taken during a drunken beach house sex party) but this jaunt seems like one of the most vivid, cinematic of the books.

Carefully detailed, pleasantly sordid and joltingly violent, "Quick Red Fox" is easy to imagine, on my mental movie screen, as directed by a period late noir helmsman like Robert Rossen ("The Hustler") or Robert Aldrich ("Kiss Me Deadly"), in crisp black-and-white Cinemascope with Paul Newman or Steve McQueen in the lead.

It's not as big in scale as some of the books, but it bobs and weaves in odd directions. Trav's confrontations with a prissy ski instructor; a pair of menacing, trailer park lesbians; and a spookily rendered German trophy wife may not be politically correct but they typify what's best and occasionally worst about MacDonald's style. McGee's warnings about women who kick for the crotch chafe against political correctness but make for one hilarious scene.

The first time I read it, I was pleased at how aburptly MacDonald wraps this one up. On a second reading, I thought perhaps it was a little anticlimactic but, in re-evaluating it, "Fox" ends economically and with a surpirsing level of sad tenderness. A good starting point for the uninitiated.

Even though I still find "Flash of Green" to be my favorite MacDonald book, there's something so appealing about the Travis McGee series that keeps me coming back to them. The "Quick Red Fox" is a perfect example is why. It is well-paced and the central mystery is engrossing. The minor characters are all well-drawn and memorable. And, of course, it's Travis!

I hope that MacDonald continues to gain in popularity, as I feel he is horribly overlooked.

"Suddenly I knew what she reminded me of. A vixen. A quick red fox. I had seen one in heat long ago on an Adirondack morning in spring, pacing along well in front of the dog fox with a very alert and springy movement, tail curled high, turning to see if he still followed, tongue lolling from between her doggy grin."

- McGee's first impression of red-haired sex symbol Lysa Dean

A mutual screenwriter friend in San Francisco, one of two real male friends Lysa has, recommends Travis to her to resolve a very sordid blackmail problem: after wrapping a movie a year and a half before, she'd taken three weeks holiday with a now-departed boyfriend who, apparently out of spontaneous boredom, brought in several casual acquaintances of both sexes for fun and games, which a month later turned up in a series of very candid anonymous photographs.

Lysa paid off the anonymous photographer at the time, her reputation for professional reliability being a little too precarious and her conservative fiancee being *far* too rich for her to risk either by sending hired muscle after the blackmailer. But now a set of copies of the photos have begun turning up in Lysa's mail with threats that suggest a potential sexual predator has gotten hold of a set of prints and created new negatives, and that Lysa's life as well as her reputation may be at stake this time.

Travis' job is to find the blackmailer and account for all the photographs and negatives rather than to protect Lysa, who is *not* the female lead this time out. (Travis has a streak of the prude in him.) Instead, Lysa's confidential secretary/personal assistant, Dana Holtzer, is assigned to accompany Travis, assist, and monitor the situation. Travis misreads Dana at first as a repressed prude not worth his respect and is set firmly straight to his great embarrassment; she knows a *lot* more about some kinds of tragedy than he does.

Yet another fine example of Travis' adventures as a knight in tarnished armour; not only is Ms. Dean a far-from-innocent lady fair, but Dana has some very complicated issues herself, though of a more wholesome variety. Travis comes to respect Dana as being worth at least ten of her employer.

The story is a kind of morality tale, in a way, as Travis tracks down the other players in that orgy in the land of eternal summer and finds a trail of broken relationships and torn-apart lives, each tragedy apparently unrelated to the rest save that the kind of people who'd be involved in that sordid holiday might be expected to come to grief. Each is an interesting and individual problem, apart from the puzzle of how the blackmailer happened upon Lysa's indiscretion and why a second set of photos has now turned up.

Points of interest:

- Lysa turns up years later in FREE FALL IN CRIMSON with a separate problem and further information about how certain events played out.

- MacDonald does *not* turn Travis' cynical insight loose upon the Hollywood culture in general, but there's plenty of philosophical musing along the way.

- Meyer is mentioned in passing, but doesn't actually appear in a book until DARKER THAN AMBER, to the best of my recollection.

- Interesting photographer friend of Travis' is introduced in passing as a consultant.

- Rather negative portrayal of some female homosexual/bisexual characters herein may offend some readers.

Reading John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series is like eating potato chips: you can't eat just one. But unlike potato chips, each book tastes better than the last. In The Quick Red Fox, the 4th book in this series, MacDonald really hits his stride.

Film-star Lysa Dean calls in McGee on a top secret and very sensitive job. Dean was at a party with nine other people when some compromising pictures were taken. The actress has been blackmailed once over these photos, and a year after the original blackmail scheme, she receives more photos and a threatening letter. Afraid that the release of these pictures will jeopardize her film career and interfere with her planned marriage to husband number five, she asks McGee to investigate. She also gives McGee her young, beautiful and efficient, but very frosty personal assistant, Dana Holtzer.

McGee and Holtzer crisscross the country trying to interview the other members from that fateful party. Some are scarred, some are missing and some are mysteriously murdered. But despite all the odds and lots of dead ends, McGee is able to assemble the pieces of this intriguing puzzle.

The Travis McGee series continues to get better and this was the best one yet. I can't wait to start number five.

I picked this book up from the library. I chose it mainly because some group on some mystery site selected it in their 100 best.

After reading it I can't imagine it being a 100 best anything. It was a good read and a throwaway book at best. It's a typical paperback PI short novel.

I found the relationship between the main character and the woman he beds to be quite a bit unrealistic. Especially when she gets hit in the head and this causes her to dump him. Great reasoning there, but we must keep our hero unemcumbered musnt we?

It was a bit short on action. And when we finally do find out who did it, it seems a bit contrived to me. The lesbian thing was silly and wouldn't be allowed in a book published today. Not PC for sure.

Overall it was easy and fast to read. It is the only one of MacDonald's books I have ever read. I am going to try The Dreadful Lemon Sky because it is considered by a lot of lists to be a classic PI book. If it is more of the same then that is probably it for me for this author.

This has been one of my personal favorites of the McGee series. Travis is hired by a very famous movie star who is being blackmailed due to some photos that show her, in the old-fashioned phrase, in compromising positions. (With more than one guy). The novel was written before you could send pictures on cell phones. McGee must track down the members of the wild party and find out which one is the blackmailer. It's a very good plot as McGee studiously eliminates suspects. And finds some have died and some, possibly, murdered.
McGee's love interest in this novel is the movie star's secretary who accompanies him on his travels. The reason given for this doesn't really hold up but, hey, she's essential to the plot.
It was another firstrate Travis McGee novel.

After a couple books away from his home base, Travis McGee is back on the Busted Flush in The Quick Red Fox. While lounging about on his houseboat, he is recruited by Lysa Dean to deal with a blackmailer. Lysa is a big-time movie star with the ego to match, but McGee is too grounded to fall for her standard seduction techniques; he does take on the job, however, and is paired with Lysa's assistant, the more interesting Dana Holtzer.

The blackmail photos date back to a party a year or so earlier when Lysa had partied too hard and gotten involved in a drunken orgy (the exact act is never specified, but the reader can guess what's in the pictures). Travis starts to track down the others involved in the party and finds that several of them have died under circumstances that may be suspicious. He and Dana will crisscross the country looking for answers (so much for staying in Florida).

This is once again another very good McGee book. By this fourth novel, John MacDonald has pretty much hit his stride, and the results are good for the readers.

The Quick Red Fox is entry number 4 in John D. MacDonald's highly successful Travis McGee series and is most certainly the best of the series to that point.
On this occasion, McGee is hired by a famous screen actress for the purpose of preventing some embarrassing photographs secretly taken at an orgy from ruining her career and reputation. As McGee criss-crosses the U.S. accompanied by the actress' ice maiden of a personal assistant, he learns some very interesting things about the other orgy participants and the disreputable photographer who took the pictures in the first place.
The narrative to The Quick Red Fox is unfailingly compelling as McGee encounters character after character whose lives have been irreparably shattered under a host of different circumstances. Each chapter is a page turning adventure in reading chock full of fascinating characters and unexpected plot twists.
This is not a "feel good" novel. Its underlying theme is that human corruption will invariably lead to ruined, shattered lives. MacDonald's dedication to this theme is so unflinchingly complete within the pages of The Quick Red Fox even the usually unflappable Travis McGee himself ultimately becomes a victim. Highly recommended.

Reading John D's McGee novels was one of my guilty pleasures in college. A friend introduced them to me and I soon read all of them as fast as I could. Instead of plowing through my accounting and business texts, I was transported to a houseboat in south Florida and Travis McGee's adventures.
Years later, this series was the inspiration for my own writing. This book, in particular, The Quick Red Fox, was the story I recalled as I started my first Stevie Garrett mystery. ASIN: B00332FJJ4 Modern Girls (Stevie Garrett Beautiful Girls)

The Quick Red Fox involves McGee in a hunt for a blackmailer of a successful actress. The event was bad behavior on the part of the actress and various partners at a wild party. The blackmail was in the form of revealing photos.
McGee is aided by the actress's personal secretary. MacDonald take the pair on a cross-country journey to find the truth. There are the usual romantic moments for Travis along with the red herrings and dangers involved with the bad guys. It is an enjoyable, quick read.