In this Travis McGee mystery, his old friend Sam Taggart enlists his help to reunite him with the woman he left in Fort Lauderdale to seek his fortune in Mexico. But Nora, his girl, and Travis find Sam dead in his motel room, and set out to salvage the money Sam would have gotten had he sold the golden idol he found there.
Travis McGee has been living a carefree live on his houseboat, with a lot of casual relationships with women But when he meets Gretel, he is ready to settle down. Then Gretel suddenly dies, seemingly as the result of an insect bite. But when Travis learns that she was murdered, he becomes unhinged.
Travis McGee is perfectly happy enjoying his retirement when his good friend Meyer talks him into helping an old man who is a stamp collector. A book of valuable stamps he invested in for a client has been swapped for a book of worthless low-value imitations.
Pluto, North Dakota, is a white town on the edge of an Ojibwe reservation. Like many small towns, the town is dying. Evelina, a girl of mixed Indian and white descent, belongs to a 'BIA' family. She likes to listen to her grandfather's family stories, from whom she learns about the town’s long, bloody history, including the slaughter of a white farm family and the hanging of innocent Native Americans unfairly targeted as the perpetrators of the crime.
Once upon a time, treasure hunter Ted Lewellen saved Travis McGee's life in a bar fight. So when Lewellen's daughter Pidge calls McGee from Hawaii and tells him she desperately needs help, he flies out to see what he can do. Pidge thinks her husband is trying to kill her, and needs McGee to find out if he really is, or if she's losing her mind. He can't find anything wrong, chalks it up to paranoia, and heads back to Fort Lauderdale. But once back there, he realizes he overlooked some clues, and Pidge might be in real danger.
Travis McGee does a favor for a friend and flies out to Texas to meet with her friend Mona. Mona is married to an older man, but has fallen in love with someone else and wants to leave him. However, her wealthy husband tells her that her trust fund has been depleted, and she thinks he has stolen it. She wants Travis to help her prove it. Travis does like her at all, and doesn't see how he can help, so he turns her down. But as they are talking, she is shot by a sniper. So of course he has to has to stay and find the killer.
Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe are at an impasse after an argument when Priscilla Eads shows up on their doorstep, telling Archie that she wants to rent a room for one week. Archie, in order to bedevil Wolfe, installs her in a spare room. Of course Wolfe kicks her out. When she is murdered as soon as she returns home, Archie is determined to find her killer. 
Imagine waking up one morning in bed with a strange man, in a strange house, with no memory of how you got here. Every day this is the way Christine wakes up. The man patiently explains he is her husband Ben; she was in a terrible accident and lost her memory. Every day he tells her the story; every night she forgets it when she goes to sleep. She is told there is nothing else they can do for her; her memory will never improve.
