Linda Lewellyn Brindle, “Pidge” to all her friends, has certainly grown up since the days of her wildly inappropriate teenage crush on her father’s friend Travis McGee. After her father’s untimely death she inherited a fortune, married a football player and took off on a journey around the world in her sailboat. When she calls McGee from Hawaii saying she’s in trouble he drops everything to help. It turns out life isn’t as dreamy as it sounds. Either Pidge’s husband is trying to kill her or she’s going insane.
McGee does his due diligence and comes to the conclusion that it’s the latter, with a loveless marriage to blame. After heading back to the mainland, McGee reminisces about his treasure-hunting days alongside Pidge’s father and in so doing begins to put the pieces together that he missed while in Hawaii. What it all comes down to is that McGee may have left Pidge all alone with a dangerous man on a small boat in the middle of the Pacific. Can he reach her before she meets an untimely end?
This is a somewhat unusual entry in the McGee series, as our hero spends less time working out the whodunit as opposed to the how and why. He still goes around in typical McGee fashion using his wits and his fits in equal measure, making a nuisance of himself and getting in the way of anyone who would underestimate him.