Nightmare in Pink

After debuting his soon-to-be iconic hero Travis McGee in the Deep Blue Good-by--a novel that, in setting, style, and mood, cut the mold for what would become the series' winning formula for the next 25 years--MacDonald took a flyer with number 2, one of the series' definite oddities. The majority of McGee novels begin with a friend arriving at Travis' Fort Lauderdale houseboat with a problem. This one starts with the self-styled beach bum walking down Park Avenue. Be wary whenever McGee strays above the Mason-Dixon Line. He's in New York, it turns out, to do a favor for an army buddy, whose sister is floundering after the death of her fiancÃ. First on the agenda: nurse Nina Gibson, the buddy's sister, back to health, one of Travis' specialties. We learned in Blue Good-by that our boy's special combination of sensitivity, savoir faire, and animal magnetism does the trick for getting "wounded doves" back in the air. But he does his best doctoring aboard the Busted Flush, on which a little cruise to the islands is always the perfect antidote for whatever ails a troubled heart, mind, and body. This time, though, confined to the four walls of a Manhattan brownstone, McGee needs to work a little harder. But not that hard. Soon enough, the flush of healthy sexuality has been restored to Nina's cheeks, but the problem of figuring out why her fiance was murdered and what happened to the money he had apparently been stealing from his investment-bank employers proves considerably more difficult. The money, we learn, was stolen not for personal gain but to help expose the gigantic scam being run by a greedy bank vice president and his femme fatale secretary. Here's where things get very weird. The bad guys are bilking the son of the bank's pater familias out of millions by dousing him with psychedelic drugs, provided by a crazed medical researcher ensconced in a psychiatric hospital, where anyone who causes trouble has his or her brains turned to mush. Naturally, Travis...