FREE FALL IN CRIMSON

Ever-resilient Travis McGee, on the mend from yet another lost love, is asked by Ron Esterland to find out who killed his wealthy, cancer-ridden father Ellis two years ago. Suspects include Ellis' long-estranged actress wife Josephine—who inherited the family fortune when the first heiress, their daughter Romola, died only weeks after Ellis' death. And, as McGee backtracks with the help of Ellis' live-in secretary Anne Renzetti, he digs up some connections to motorcycle gangs—the subject of movies made by Josephine's longtime lover, off-the-wall movie director Peter Kesner. The couple's current film project, however (using the last of the Esterland loot), is about a hot-air balloon meet—and McGee goes on location, to a small Iowa town, using chumship with star Lysa Dean to gain entree and soon exposing an explosive situation involving pornography, drugs, violence, and local teenagers. The ensuing action: the enraged townspeople's attack on the movie crowd; McGee's escape via balloon; and a murder-rampage by a nasty leftover from Kesner's motorcycle movies. Not quite as wham-bamtense as The Green Ripper, but all the necessary MacDonald ingredients are on the premises: fast pace; incredibly sordid doings which impinge on McGee's blue skies; a terrific windup; and a new love, Anne, who's probably good for at least one more book before she, too, like previous McGee ladies, bites the dust.