SIREN SONG

A newly divorced schoolteacher heads for Wisconsin’s Door County peninsula, buys a boat, and finds himself in a plot out of Travis McGee.

The Siren Song had belonged to Green Bay cop Charles Jimmy Parnell, unwittingly pushed off a bridge by a truck driver, or maybe by someone else. Secreted in the bilge is a locked box containing half a million dollars that may have belonged to Harold Sloan, also pushed off the bridge but a good 20 years ago. Had Parnell witnessed Sloan’s demise? Was he blackmailing Sloan’s killers? Is his ex, the stunning Kelly, entitled to any of the money JP Griffin, the boat’s new owner, might find? Will sleeping with him insure her a share? As JP sails along coastal towns, he stops at night to read Parnell’s stash of Travis McGee novels and bits of his unfinished manuscript about Sloan’s demise. It rains. It pours. The boat tosses, turns, and blows up, taking with it a bad guy and a gal. Kelly confesses to a few things. JP clutches his gym bag to his chest, realizes he has enough loot to skip teaching for awhile, and puts away thoughts of McGee.

Lots of advice on how to buy a used cabin cruiser and enough allusions to Travis McGee to send readers back to John D. MacDonald’s books, which are a far better entertainment than YA author Schwandt has concocted here.