Private investigators

Xavier Kilgarven has three baffling cases in his upper New York state 19th-century home, all of which are failures.

An unoccupied hotel in the Adirondacks in winter reveals a frozen corpse.

Private Detective Jason Black with his wife, Patty, and their son, Jay, have returned to their log home in the Adirondack Mountain Hamlet of of Old Forge and Detective Black is busy working on routine check cases, when he receives a telephone call from Private Investigator Wayne Beyea of Mableton, Georgia concerning a missing young woman who failed to return to her parents home in Mableton after selling magazine subscriptions with other sales people in the vast Adirondack Mountain Park region.

Travis McGee investigates when a small cruiser owned by his friend, Meyer the Economist, is blown to bits with Meyer's niece and her new husband on board.