The Empty Copper Sea: A Travis Mcgee Novel by John D. MacDonald (English) Paperb

Description: The Empty Copper Sea by John D. MacDonald From a beloved master of crime fiction, The Empty Copper Sea is one of many classic novels featuring Travis McGee, the hard-boiled detective who lives on a houseboat. Asking for help is something a proud man like Van Harder would never do. So when he shows up at the Busted Flush, Travis McGee knows that he must be the mans last resort. What Harder wants salvaged is his reputation. After a long career as a seaman, he was piloting a boat the night his employer fell overboard. Harder is certain hes been set up, but to help him, McGee must prove that a dead man is actually alive. "John D. MacDonald is a shining example for all us in the field. Talk about the best ."--Mary Higgins Clark The fateful ride started with Harder at the helm of Hubbard Lawlesss luxury cruiser. It ends with him coming to, fuzzy and disoriented, and Hub lost to the water. Now everyone is saying that Harder got drunk, passed out, and is negligent in his bosss death. The thing is, Vans not a drinker . . . at least, not anymore. Who would want to frame the good captain, and to what end? Dead or alive, Lawless is worth a lot of money. People are always eager to get a piece of that action--including some, as McGee soon finds, who are willing to take a piece out of anyone who gets in their way. Features a new Introduction by Lee Child FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography John D. MacDonald was an American novelist and short-story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel The Executioners, which was adapted into the film Cape Fear . In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980, he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life, he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business, he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, "They pay me to do this! They dont realize, I would pay them." He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986. Review Praise for John D. MacDonald and the Travis McGee novels"The great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller."—Stephen King"My favorite novelist of all time . . . All I ever wanted was to touch readers as powerfully as John D. MacDonald touched me. No price could be placed on the enormous pleasure that his books have given me. He captured the mood and the spirit of his times more accurately, more hauntingly, than any literature writer—yet managed always to tell a thunderingly good, intensely suspenseful tale."—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"A master storyteller, a masterful suspense writer . . . John D. MacDonald is a shining example for all of us in the field. Talk about the best."—Mary Higgins Clark"A dominant influence on writers crafting the continuing series character . . . I envy the generation of readers just discovering Travis McGee, and count myself among the many readers savoring his adventures again."—Sue Grafton"One of the great sagas in American fiction."—Robert B. Parker"Most readers loved MacDonalds work because he told a rip-roaring yarn. I loved it because he was the first modern writer to nail Florida dead-center, to capture all its languid sleaze, racy sense of promise, and breath-grabbing beauty."—Carl Hiaasen"The consummate pro, a master storyteller and witty observer . . . John D. MacDonald created a staggering quantity of wonderful books, each rich with characterization, suspense, and an almost intoxicating sense of place. The Travis McGee novels are among the finest works of fiction ever penned by an American author and they retain a remarkable sense of freshness."—Jonathan Kellerman"What a joy that these timeless and treasured novels are available again."—Ed McBain"Travis McGee is the last of the great knights-errant: honorable, sensual, skillful, and tough. I cant think of anyone who has replaced him. I cant think of anyone who would dare."—Donald Westlake"Theres only one thing as good as reading a John D. MacDonald novel: reading it again. A writer way ahead of his time, his Travis McGee books are as entertaining, insightful, and suspenseful today as the moment I first read them. He is the all-time master of the American mystery novel."—John Saul Review Quote Praise for John D. MacDonald and the Travis McGee novels Excerpt from Book One Van Harder came aboard the Busted Flush on a hot bright May morning. My houseboat was at her home mooring, Slip F-18 at Bahia Mar, Fort Lauderdale. I was in the midst of one of my periodic spasms of energy born of guilt. You go along thinking you are properly maintaining your houseboat and your runabout, going by the book, keeping a watchful eye on the lines, the bilge, the brightwork, and all. But the book was written for more merciful climates than Florida, once described to the King of Spain by DeSoto, as "an uninhabitable sandspit," even though at the time it was inhabited by quite a lot of Indians. Suddenly everything starts to snap, rip, and fall out, to leak and squeal and give final gasps. Then you bend to it, or you go live ashore like a sane person. Crabbing along, inch by inch, I was replacing the rail posts around the whole three sides of the sun deck, port, starboard, and stern, using a power drill and a power screwdriver to set the four big screws down through the stainless flange at the foot of each post. I had sore knees, a lame wrist, and a constant drip of sweat from nose and chin. I wore an old pair of tennis shorts, and the sun was eating into my tired brown back. It had been six, maybe seven years since Id seen Van Harder. He had owned the Queen Bee III in charter-boat row. He had been steady and he could find fish, and so had less trouble finding customers than a lot of the others. I knew he wasnt going to overwhelm me with a lot of conversation. I knew hed had some bad luck, but that was a long time ago. A frugal man, he had saved his money and finally sold the Queen Bee III to Ranee Fazzo, had acquired a shrimp boat and a large debt, and had moved around to the other coast. I finished the post, walked over, and mopped my face on the towel. We sat on the two pilot chairs, swiveled away from the instrument panel to face astern, toward all the shops and towers of Bahia Mar, both of us shaded by the folding navy top. Van Harder was a lean, sallow man. Tall, silent, and expressionless. I had never seen him without a greasy khaki cap with a bill. Florida born for generations back, from that tough, tireless, malnourished, merciless stock which had scared the living hell out of the troops they had faced during the War Between the States. His eyes were a pale watery blue. He was about fifty, I guessed. "They tell me Fazzo is fishing out of Marathon now," he said. "Doing okay, from what I hear." Silence. "Meyer still around?" "Still around. He had some errands over in town today." Silence. "Guess you heard I lost the Queen Bee Number Four. Shrimp boat. Sixty-five foot." "Yes, I remember now. Wasnt that four years or so ago?" "Two month shy of five year. Run down by a phosphate ship headed for Tampa. Forty mile west of Naples. Three in the morning. Lost two men. One of them had the helm. No way to tell what happened." "Insurance?" He spat over the rail, downwind, with excellent accuracy and velocity. "Enough to pay off what I owed on her. Got a job hired captain on another shrimper. Bigger. New. Hula Marine Enterprises." "Hula?" "Thats the h and u off the front of Hubbard and the l and a off the front of Lawless. Hubbard Lawless. Hula run six shrimp boats at the time, and seven by the time they sold out a couple of years ago. What happened was Hub seen the handwriting on the wall, and he sold out to Weldron, which is a part of Associated Foods, own markets and all. I could have stayed on with Weldron, like most of the others did, except the ones so old they would have been in retirement too quick, and Weldron wouldnt take them. But Hub Lawless, he offered me a job skipper of the Julie. Real nice cruiser." "Ive seen her over at Pier Sixty-six, way out at the end. Nice." "Dutch built. Big twin diesels. Fast. Good range. White with blue trim. Howd you know it was the same Julie?" "I remember that name. Lawless. I asked who the owner was." "If it was a year ago, I was captaining her. Year ago April. Had some time to come over here and see who was around, how things were going. Didnt happen to run into you then, McGee." "But this time you looked me up." Not quite a question, but at least a leading remark. It sailed right by him. No response. I slumped in the chair, chin on my chest, ankles crossed, staring patiently at my big brown bare feet, at some paler cleat marks on the outside of the left ankle, and at the deep curving ugly scar down the outside of my right thigh. "Funny thing about it all," he said, "was that Hub took me on because he knowed I was steady. The captain he had before, I wont mention no names, he got into the whiskey and he took a cut for himself when he ordered supplies, and he had brought women aboard when Hub was off on business trips." "Why do you say thats funny?" "Funny meaning strange how it came out, is all. I become a born-again Christian when I was twenty-eight years old. Clawed my suffering way up out of the black depths of sin to walk in love and brotherhood with our good Lord Jesus. Now Hub knew that. And he respected that. Until that night he never had no women aboard except his wife and his daughter." "What night?" He turned and gave me a long, watery blue stare. "The night Hub Lawless got drownded! What night you think I was talking about? There wasnt a newspaper in Florida didnt have the whole thing in it." "When did it happen?" "March twenty-two. Fell off the Julie somehow." "Ive been gone since early March, Van. I got back a week ago. Duke Davis had a party down in the Grenadines on that big ketch of his, the Antsie, and he had a bad fall and tore up his back, and he cabled me to come down and help him bring the Antsie all the way home. I didnt have any time to read the papers or listen to the news." "Thought you look darker than I remembered." "Whats this all about, Van?" He gave it about thirty seconds of thought before answering. "I know maybe more than I should about the time you heped out Arthur Wilkinson when he was way down, and it was right after you heped him, he married Chookie McCall. What I heard that time was that if somebody lost something important to them, youd try to get it back, and if you did, youd keep half what its worth." "Thats close enough. So?" He leaned toward me, just a little. I sensed that this was something he had thought about very carefully, turning it this way and that, not certain whether he was being a fool. His wisdom was the sea. So he took onto himself more dignity. "They is stolen from me my good name, McGee." "I dont see how or what--" "Now you wait a minute. I got marked down as a drunken man, a fool who lost the owner overboard and nearly lost his vessel. They had an inquiry and held I was negligent. I havent got my papers and I cant work at my trade. I have talked it over with Eleanor Ann, who has got a nursing job there in Timber Bay, and she says if it is what I want to do, shell help out. I would say that by and large, my good name is worth twenty thousand dollars anyway, so what Ill do, Ill give you a piece of paper. You can word it any way you want, and Ill sign it. It will say that if you can find some way to show it wasnt my fault at all, I will pay you ten thousand dollars, not all at once, but over whatever time it takes me to make it and pay it." Everything he had was wrapped up in that request: his pride, his dignity, his seafaring career, his worth as a man. And I sensed that this was the very last thing he had been able to think of. Travis McGee, the last chance he had. "You better tell me exactly what happened." "Youll make the deal?" "After you tell me what happened, I will sit around and think about it, and I will probably talk to Meyer about it. And then I will tell you if I think I can help at all. If I cant, Im wasting your time and mine." He thought that over slowly, pursed his lips, and gave a little nod of acceptance. And told his story. At about four in the afternoon of March twenty-second, Hubbard Lawless had phoned the Julie from his country office out at the grove and asked if the cruiser was okay to take a night run on down to Clearwater. It was a pointless question because Van Harder always kept the Julie ready to go. Van reminded Mr. Lawless that the mate, DeeGee Walloway, had been given time off to go up to Waycross, Georgia, where his father was close to death with cancer of the throat. Lawless said there was no need for the mate. There would be four in the party, and one of them would be available to handle the lines, if necessary, and they could certainly serve their own booze and peanuts. Harder thought it would be four businessmen; he had often made short trips up and down the Florida coast when Lawless wanted to meet with people without attracting too much attention. The boat made a good place to hold a conference. It couldnt easily be bugged, a fact that politicians seemed to appreciate. They came aboard at nine. They came down to the marina dock in John Tuckermans big blue Chrysler Imperial. John Tuckerman was a sort of unofficial assistant to Hub Lawless. He didnt seem to hold any particular office in any of Hubs many corporations and partnerships, but he always seemed to be around, laughing, making jokes, making sure of air reservations, hotel reservations, dockage space, hangar space, and so Details ISBN0812984080 Author John D. MacDonald Pages 288 Publisher RANDOM HOUSE Language English Year 2013 ISBN-10 0812984080 ISBN-13 9780812984088 Format Paperback Publication Date 2013-09-10 Media Book DEWEY FIC Short Title EMPTY COPPER SEA REV/E Edition Description Revised Series Travis Mcgee Imprint Random House Trade Paperbacks Series Number 17 Audience General/Trade Subtitle A Travis Mcgee Novel Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2013-09-10 NZ Release Date 2013-09-10 US Release Date 2013-09-10 UK Release Date 2013-09-10 Place of Publication New York We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:137979138;

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