3. Pale Grey for Guilt by John D. MacDonald

I am pretty sure I have read this one, but it would have been before the Olman's Fifty era, so I couldn't find it listed.  I generally avoid the Travis McGee's because they tend to have too much of JDM's run-on sentencing philosophizing about love.  They really feel like a big part of their selling point was as escapist fantasy for Mad Men era middle managers and suburban dads who want to read about swinging girls on houseboats.  I get it, but it's really not my fantasy at all and the lamenting about the super hot but silently troubled beach babes gets me down.  There is much of that in this one, as well as a financial pigeon drop revenge plot whose accounting details were too complicated for me.  I was hoping for some pure fun after the history of the world but found this more of a slog to get through.

The plot here is that McGee's old high school buddy who runs a houseboat rental gets squeezed by developers on either side of him, squeezed so much that he supposedly kills himself by dropping an engine block on his head.  It stinks to McGee and he starts poking around, uncovering an all-too common scheme between local government, small-time scammers and big-time developer scammers.  McGee fucks all their shit up.