Murder at sea. No survivors, no evidence, no loose ends. Only a boatload of cash left for the taking. In this explosive novel from the author of the Travis McGee series, nothing is certain—not with enough money at stake to change a dozen lives . . . or end them.   Introduction by Dean Koontz   Crissy Harkinson knows all about the cash that left the Gold Coast of Florida, headed for the Bahamas on board a pleasure boat. It came from Texas, unrecorded, intended as a bribe. Now it is Crissy’s last chance for the big score she’s been working toward for years, using her brains and her body.   Then other people get involved, including a Texas lawyer too cool to commit himself to anything or anybody, a beautiful Cuban maid who might not be as silly as she seems, and a pitifully broken girl, adrift and unconscious in a tiny boat on the giant blue river of the Gulf Stream. Turns out these are shark-infested waters. And none of them are going down without a fight.   Praise for John D. MacDonald and The Last One Left   “As a young writer, all I ever wanted was to touch readers as powerfully as John D. MacDonald touched me.” —Dean Koontz   “A stunning adventure.” —Chicago Tribune   “John D. MacDonald created a staggering quantity of wonderful books, each rich with characterization, suspense, and an almost intoxicating sense of place.” —Jonathan Kellerman Praise for John D. MacDonald   “ The great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.” —Stephen King   “My favorite novelist of all time . . . All I ever wanted was to touch readers as powerfully as John D. MacDonald touched me. No price could be placed on the enormous pleasure that his books have given me. He captured the mood and the spirit of his times more accurately, more hauntingly, than any ‘literature’ writer—yet managed always to tell a thunderingly good, intensely suspenseful tale.” —Dean Koontz   “To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.” —Kurt Vonnegut   “A master storyteller, a masterful suspense writer . . . John D. MacDonald is a shining example for all of us in the field. Talk about the best .” —Mary Higgins Clark   “The consummate pro, a master storyteller and witty observer . . . John D. MacDonald created a staggering quantity of wonderful books, each rich with characterization, suspense, and an almost intoxicating sense of place.” —Jonathan Kellerman   “There’s only one thing as good as reading a John D. MacDonald novel: reading it again. A writer way ahead of his time, he is the all-time master of the American mystery novel.” —John Saul John D. MacDonald was an American novelist and short-story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel The Executioners, which was adapted into the film Cape Fear . In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980, he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life, he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business, he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986. One   AT THE SMALL bon voyage party at the Delmar Bay Yacht Club Kip and Selma had given Howard and Junie Prowt a little brass plaque to affix to one of the bulkheads of the HoJun. It read “Oh Lord, thy sea is so vast and my boat is so small!”   Pull off the backing paper and press the gummed back of the plaque to any smooth clean surface. Out in the middle of the Gulf Stream, at ten o’clock on the bright morning of a windy and cloudless day in May, Howard Prowt, braced on the fly bridge of his thirty-four-foot Owens cruiser, knew the precise corner of the exact drawer where he had stowed the gift, and fought the absurd compulsion to go below and find it and peel it and stick it up.   The stacks and tan cubes of Fort Lauderdale were below the horizon astern. He had plotted his course exactly as he had been taught in the Power Squadron classes, making the proper allowance for the northerly run of the Gulf Stream, and for standard deviation and compass deviation. He had computed his time of arrival at Bimini on the basis of 2300 rpm on his twin 150’s. They had left Pier 66 at 8:30 and had passed the sea buoy at fourteen minutes before nine. At eleven minutes past noon the HoJun should reach the channel across the bar outside Bimini harbor.   Nobody told you how it would be. How it would feel. That was the trouble. They just said it could get a little dusty out there in the Stream. They didn’t tell you about the strangeness, the alone-ness, the strange blue color and the power of it. There wa