First in the Travis McGee suspense series revolving around Travis, who only works when he needs the money. Based in Florida. Now, sometimes, this "psychiatrist" offers--and receives--sexual therapy from the women he encounters, to everyone's better health and happiness. He shows discretion, though--reluctant to take advantage. Sometimes. I'm spending a lot of time on Travis before talking about plot and style, because I have a feeling I'm hooked on the series, in for the long run, and the narrator is the most important ingredient in such cases. You either relate to him, or you give up after the first couple of issues. With my usual penchant for making inappropriate associations, I drew some parallels between Travis McGee and Walden: a love for the natural world, a self imposed exile from the artificial society, a plea for cleaner living and peace of mind. Here's a sample of his rants: I was a bit miffed because I saw a casting notice which asked for cars of all types. No mention of ‘1960’s period’ cars. McGee is no James Bond, more like Paladin in "Have Gun Will Travel". Our self-professed tough guy doesn't like to work & lives in semi-permanent retirement. He only takes on a job when there is a good chance of a substantial return & then takes 50% plus expenses - or so he says. It's fun watching him give in & rationalize his departures from his hard-hearted intentions.

Even when that means believing women are nothing more than objects of his sliding scale of deserved affection and taking advantage of those too weak or too kind or too grateful to say no. He was in a gigantic circular bed, with a pink canopy over it. In all the luxuriant femininity of that big bedroom, George looked shrunken and misplaced, like a dead worm in a birthday cake.” In 1967, author MacDonald refused permission for a television series about Travis McGee, believing that people would stop reading the novels were Travis McGee regularly on television. Writing Travis McGee from 1964 to 1984, John D MacDonald earned admiration from a diverse but luminous cross-section of his fellow writers. Kingsley Amis, Stephen King, Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen have all praised him. The latter two are of particular note for crime fiction aficionados. With the possible exception of Charles Willeford, who came to prominence much later than MacDonald, no figure is more important to the development of South Florida crime fiction and ‘Florida noir’ than John D MacDonald.

About pastoffences

Here he learns of a man who made what seems like an illegal fortune while completing military service India. For reasons I won’t go into, his surviving descendants never got to see any of this as they were conned by a man who has bad written all over him. Travis isn’t busy right now but neither is he particularly inclined to disturb his cosy routine of not doing very much. But hey, a payday is a payday so soon he’s engaged in the chase. It’s not going to be easy as there are few clues to the whereabouts of the conman or even the nature or scale of the potential bounty. But Travis is a rangy charmer with a nose for a lead and he’s soon on the scent.

Moored in Lauderdale aboard the 52-foot houseboat Busted Flush (won where else but in a private poker session), Travis McGee is introduced idling the afternoon away with Chookie McCall, a dancer and choreographer who hasn't known Travis long enough to figure out whether he really does find things for people, keeping half of its value. Chookie just so happens to know someone looking for something and has invited her over. McGee hears the woman out. Cathy Kerr is a dancer whose father served in the Air Transport Command in India and Burma during the war and brought home an item of awesome value. Cathy just doesn't know what it was. The news that Leonardo DiCaprio was going to play Travis McGee in a movie based on The Deep Blue Good-by had me over the moon. While not quite the physical match for John D. MacDonald's iconic detective, or rather self-described 'salvage consultant,' I was still ready to see Leo chillin' on the Busted Flush in the Dennis Lehane-scripted adaptation. But Leo left the building - but would still produce - so the hunt was on for a new leading man to play the Fort Lauderdale beach bum who takes on clients only when the booze runs dry. Travis McGee was not on a search for enlightenment, but you may find some when reading MacDonald’s series. An insightful know-it-all, a thoughtful man of action, McGee is as fascinating when laying bad guys out as he is when lamenting a Florida landscape that was then disappearing and now is no more. But it still exists in John D MacDonald’s books. And crime fiction readers owe Random House their thanks for keeping old Florida and its guardian alive. I might wish for the original Robert McGinnis illustrations that graced the covers of first-edition McGee adventures, but the sexual politics displayed might mark the books as dated and repel more readers than they attract. Besides, the covers are secondary. In any case, agreeing or disagreeing with the protagonist's opinions or manners doesn't always determine whether you become interested or entertained by a writer, and I must admit, I could barely put the darn book down. For most fast readers, this is positively a book to be read in one sitting, but I am one of those unfortunate readers that contemplates the hidden meaning of every word, thus it required me four sittings. For me, MacDonald's writing was something that I could almost touch, and the action was in a way non-stop, that is, unless he was handing out a spoonful of Travis McGee wisdom to which I didn't always concur, but I couldn't help but appreciate.A very well told story. I get a little lost in the descriptions of the boat world because I can't find my way around. And you women out there, I met him first. You guys, well, hummm. Face it you love him too, especially his sensitive side, eh? Who am I to keep from putting my shoulder to the wheel? Why am I not thinking about an estate and how to protect it? Gad, woman, I could be writing a million dollars a year in life insurance. I should be pulling a big oar in the flagship of life.” (Is this really Travis or, I believe more likely, MacDonald talking about himself?) Bless them all, the forlorn little rabbits. They are the displaced persons of our emotional culture. They are ravenous for romance, yet settle for what they call making-out. Their futile, acne-pitted men drift out of high school into a world so surfeited with unskilled labor there is competition for bag-boy jobs in supermarkets.” (MacDonald doesn’t devote as much of his cynicism to young women in his later novels.)

But McGee sees his real job as being a sort of hardboiled ‘knight-errant’, usually aiding a nubile post-WWII damsel-in-distress. The pattern for the series is set in The Deep Blue Good-by when Cathy asks Travis McGee for help recovering a dubiously-earned fortune that her dead father left hidden. McGee takes the case, and it leads to a smarmy but persuasive lowlife named Junior Allen. And in his effort to learn more about Allen, McGee meets his latest victim, Lois Atkinson. Junior Allen had wormed his way into controlling Lois’ life and money, and she was reduced to a nearly catatonic state by the time McGee came along. In addition to being a brute and a treasure-hunting rival for Travis, Lois reveals that Allen is also a serial rapist. Travis proceeds with his plan to recover Cathy’s fortune and ensure that Junior Allen meets justice. MacDonald's books ought to be part of a writer's education on how to write. He's incredible with his poetic descriptions, how beautifully he paints a scene and creates a person, using words without going into cliché. And no, his words are unique enough that I don't recall reading them in anyone else's work. So no excuses that he was able to create the clichés later writers have to avoid! These are the playmate years, and they are demonstrably fraudulent. The scene is reputed to be acrawl with adorably amoral bunnies to whom sex is a pleasant social favor. The new culture. And they are indeed present and available, in exhausting quantity, but there is a curious tastelessness about them. A woman who does not guard and treasure herself cannot be of very much value to anyone else. The onset of the sixties is a Freudian era… Women are instrumental in everything… They are hot stuff… They are victims…

Success!

The people whom Travis McGee could analyze so well? Well, of course he could, since they were familiar types, cardboard cutouts of people. That's easy to see in retrospect.