A self-inflicted wound (it happens to the best of us!)
Any author as prolific as John D. MacDonald was, is bound to brew up a clanker every now and then. Like this one:
Editors are supposed to save writers from making fools of themselves. But more often than not, they dare not demand changes in anything written by someone who makes a lot of money for the publisher. Editors, after all, are just as replaceable as writers.
So there was John D. with his “all-girl nude yacht crew”… and there is the reader asking, again and again, “What ever possessed him to write this? What in the world could he have been thinking?”
[Note: Lisa, who tracked down the book’s title, was for years the keeper of “Lee’s Twitter.” Hats off to Lisa!]