It’s very good news in my world that the Murder Room Series is bringing out John D. MacDonald’s old stand-alone novels, and at a reasonable price. I flee from postmodern literature to these books like a cockroach from a kitchen light.

Area of Suspicion was published in 1954, long before MacDonald’s Travis McGee character was conceived. But it looks as if the setting of the opening must have stuck with him, because it’s right out of that series. Gevan Dean lives the life of a beach bum in Florida, in a community of beach and boat people who make a lifestyle of partying and casual sex. He doesn’t live on a houseboat like McGee, but the ambience is familiar. Gev used to run the family business, a manufacturing company, but he fled after he found his brother Ken in the arms of his fiancée, Niki. He went to Florida to forget. Lately, though, the party life has palled on him, and he’s been pulling back from his neighbors.

Then he gets word that his brother Ken is dead, murdered, apparently by a random robber. By the time he gets the news, it’s too late to attend the funeral. But there is time to attend the meeting of the company’s board, where the next CEO will be chosen. He’s going to go to that.

Back at home, in a fictional city, he is reunited with Niki, who’s as beautiful and seductive as he remembers. She tells him she made a mistake. It’s Gev she loves. All he needs to do is vote his shares for the current CEO, rather than for the old employee his uncle supports, and they can run off together and live happily ever after.

But Gev is suspicious. Something doesn’t smell right. The CEO Niki supports is a little too smooth, a little too ingratiating. And why has he fired all the best men Gev hired back when he was in charge? And was his brother’s murder really just wrong place, wrong time? When he starts asking awkward questions, Gev soon find himself facing physical threats. And a plot that’s deeper and more devious than he could imagine.

John D. MacDonald studied business at Harvard, so he writes about it with understanding and sympathy – something that’s rare in popular literature. He also had, even at this early date, an excellent way with his characters – they’re well-rounded and sympathetic, even the bad ones. Our hero Gev is smart enough to leave town for his own safety when the police suggest he do that(!) And the writing is evocative and spare, all at the same time.

Highly recommended. Cautions for sex scenes, though they’re pretty tame by today’s standards.