This is book 15 of the "Travis McGee" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

Number 14. Hawaii! At least for a little while. The daughter of a former client. They've both said they want to spend the rest of their lives together, so I presume this letter he just read from her will be the last she's heard of. Don't ever sell life insurance to a woman Travis McGee likes.

Leaving us wondering if the nice, dumb, guy she married actually murdered her. She thought he was going to—but was clearly off her rocker, having even taken photos of the other woman sun-bathing on the deck of their boat -- and having the woman not show in the photos. No chance for anybody to swap the film or anything, either.

And even this late (1973, I think this is the first paperback edition; Cover price of $1.75, indicating maybe a later printing) they quote the New York Times calling MacDonald "one of the most create and reliable writers of paperback originals". And going on to say he can create a series character, which makes sense for the first books when he's an established writer starting a series for the first time, but makes less sense to my mind 9 years later.

There's also treasure hunting. Gold. Tons of gold. Mmmmmm. And they get to Samoa for a while.

In the end, she does survive, but simply falls out of love with McGee. Almost immediately. Tragic. (She'd had a really bad time with the repeated attempts of her sociopath husband to kill her, and was in therapy at the time.) Another hard time for Travis. And he got beaten and nearly drowned by her husband, too. And to top it off, he chose to drop out of the group that was going to follow up her father's last 7 treasure salvage ideas and get rich. Poor McGee.