A Deadly Shade of Gold was published in 1965 and was the fifth novel in the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald. The introduction is by Lee Child, whose Jack Reacher character reminds us of Travis McGee.

Child’s introduction tells us, “Suspense Fiction trades on surprising and unexpected twists,” and as a master of this type of fiction himself, his comment has extra meaning. It is also no surprise to find on page one under a “Praise for John D. MacDonald, the first comment from Dean Koontz where he says, “My favorite novelist of all time.”

In this story, McGee’s old friend Sam Taggart drops in unexpectedly after being gone for years to visit both McGee and his old girlfriend, Nora, in Florida. He tells McGee about a group of solid gold Aztec idols that Sam is trying to get away with, but he is murdered in a vicious late-night knife attack before he even has a chance to see Nora, who still is in love with him.

McGee and Nora team up and are obsessed with vengeance and set out to find the killer and regain the gold. Their chase leads to a Mexican town full of American expatriates off the West Coast. McGee becomes closely involved with several beautiful and fascinating women on the quest to get the gold.

Quotes from this Book

“I do not like the killers, and the killing bravely and well crap. I do not like the bully boys, the Teddy Roosevelt’s, the Hemingways, the Ruarks. They are merely slightly more sophisticated versions of the New Jersey file clerks who swarm into the Adirondacks in the fall, in red cap, beard stubble, and taut hero’s grin, talking out of the side of their mouths, exuding fumes of bourbon, come to slay the ferocious white-tailed deer. It is the search for balls. A man should have one chance to bring something down. He should have his shot at something, a shining running something, and see it come a-tumbling down, all mucus and steaming blood stench and excrement, the eyes going dull during the final muscle spasms. And if he is, in all parts and purposes, a man, he will file that away as a part of his process of growth and life and eventual death. And if he is perpetually, hopelessly a boy, he will lust to do it again, with a bigger beast.”

“That is the flaw in my personality. Vanity. And your flaw is sentimentality. They are the flaws which will inevitably kill us both.”

“The Only Thing in the World Worth a Damn is the Strange, Touching, Pathetic, Awesome Nobility of the Individual Human Spirit.”