The Lonely Silver Rain Summary
John D. MacDonald

The Lonely Silver Rain Summary

Like all the Travis McGee novels, The Lonely Silver Rain deals with readily identified social concerns, but the novels are never simply topical; invariably, more general issues are raised, and these can be seen recurring throughout the series. In The Lonely Silver Rain, the cocaine problem of the mid-1980s provides the immediate subject matter, but a more basic sense of corruption and loss of values is evident both in this novel and in the series as a whole. In detective-novel convention, for instance, the client is invariably a sympathetic figure — perhaps foolish or naive but fundamentally innocent. In The Lonely Silver Rain, McGee's client is disturbingly unsympathetic: a retired real estate developer whose years of aggressive business dealings culminate in the sudden collapse of his wife during the construction of a long-awaited dream home and who remarries his gold-digger ex-secretary. They seem, on the whole, to...

(read more from the Short Guide)