Heir apparent to a knight errant

In the beginning, there wasJohn D. MacDonald. And lo, it was good.

Then John D’s protagonist — handsome, hairy-chested heroTravis McGee— begat other knights errant, including a loveable serial killer, an amateur-sleuth photographer, a renegade roadkill-eating former governor and a crime-fighting marine biologist.

And lo, it wasreallygood.

John D. MacDonald nearly created the whole Florida crime genre with his McGee novels, which he sprinkled over the couple decades before his death in 1986.

But h...