The Mystery, Crime, and Thriller Group discussion
Favorite Authors/Books/Series
>
Is anyone a fan of The Travis McGee series by John D McDonald
date
newest »
newest »
Mod
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/9...
He's a great guy and I think I'll start re-reading him.
This series is near the top of my to read list.Heard a lot of good things about it.
Are they more popular with male readers I wonder? Or do they have a wider audience?
I just scrolled through his wikipaedia page and while I have heard of the Travis McGee stories, I have never read any of his books. I may have to try one. I have seen both versions of Cape Fear and much preferred the original, but I think that's about the extent of my McDonald knowledge.
I loved the Travis McGee books and have some in my library that I re-read from time to time. Meyer is a wonderful character who really adds to the stories.
Yes Bill Cape Fear is a great book and like you I prefer the original movie. I envy the fact that you've not read any McGee books. My advice is to start with the first which is a cracker jack of a book - The Deep Blue Goodbye.As Erna has stated Meyer is an incredible character. He is an absolute genius and whilst McGee is no slouch in the brain department Meyer is a worthwhile ally and companion.
I must dust my old copies down. I miss the philosophy and great writing.
I got several at a book sale and just started the first one. Now sidetracked by a book club read, but going back shortly. I really like the few pages I have read. So happy to see that more than the "latest thing you must read" is talked about.
“UP WITH LIFE. STAMP OUT ALL SMALL AND LARGE INDIGNITIES. LEAVE EVERYONE ALONE TO MAKE IT WITHOUT PRESSURE. DOWN WITH HURTING. LOWER THE STANDARD OF LIVING. DO WITHOUT PLASTICS. SMASH THE SERVO MECHANISMS. STOP GRABBING. SNUFF THE BREEZE AND HUG THE KIDS.LOVE ALL LOVE. HATE ALL HATE”I’ve had a sad and happy week. I just finished reading John D. MacDonald‘s A Tan And Sandy Silence, one of the celebrated crime writer’s 21 stories featuring charismatic, extremely likeable boat bum, amateur philosopher, optimistic cynic, involuntary womanizer and ‘salvage consultant’ Travis McGee. I have now read all the McGee novels.
Forget James Bond with his paper thin personality and cruel vigilante traits or fat headed Hercules Poirot and his crime-solving by numbers technique. McGee, who lives in a boat called the Busted Flush, which he won in poker game and which is moored at Slip F-18 at Bahia Mar Marina, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is the real deal. He also drives a Rolls-Royce that’s been converted into a pick-up truck, called Miss Agnes. He’s either a Korean war or Vietnam war veteran, doesn’t like working and only gets off his boat when he is low on cash. He has no real ambitions. A flawed hero with a healthy reality check and a supernatural coolness, all American and yet infused with a socialist outlook. And I mean socialist.
McGee makes a living by retrieving lost fortunes for people who can’t go to the police. He is a bruiser and has absolutely no compunction about killing people when he deems it necessary. Not for money, mind you, but for justice. I know, it’s a big word. But between getting laid, old Travis has a pretty astute eye for everything that is wrong with the world, with his world, with Florida. And he profoundly dislikes liars, real estate developers and moneyed people who appear to be doing nothing but spend.
In A Tan And Sandy Silence, one of the meanest, most violent McGee novels, the hardboiled boat bum attempts to find a woman he once had a fling with. McGee sleeps with lots of women, usually damsels in distress or happy go lucky beach bunnies. He sees sex as a kind of therapy, both for himself and the women he shares his bed with. And ne never ceases to comment on young beach bunnies, especially when he hangs out with his sidekick, the fat, hairy economist Meyer who also lives on a boat. “I kept to the far right lane and went slowly because the yearly invasion of Easter bunnies was upon us, was beginning to dwindle, and there was too little time to enjoy them. They had been beaching long enough so that there were very few cases of lobster pink. The tans were nicely established and the ones that still burned had a brown burn. There are seven lads to every Easter bunny, and the litheness and firmness of the young ladies gamboling on the beach, ambling across the highway, stretching out to take the sun, is something to stupefy the senses. It creates something which is beyond lust, even beyond that aesthetic pelasure of looking upon pleasing line and graceful move. It is possible to stretch a generalized lust, or an aesthetic turn of mind, to encompass a hundred lassies – say five and a half tons of vibrant and youthful and sun-toned flesh clad in about enough fabric to half fill a bushel basket. The erotic imagination or the artistic temperament can assimilate these five and a half tons of flanks and thighs, nates and breasts, laughing eyes and bouncing hair and shining eyes, but neither lust nor art can deal with a few thousand of them. Perceptions go into stasis. You cannot compare one with another. They become a single silken and knowledgeable creature, unknowable, a thousand-legged contemptuous joy, armored by the total wisdom of body and instinct of the female kind. A single cell of the huge creature, a single entity, one girl, can be trapped and baffled, hurt and emptied, broken and abandoned. Or to flip the coin, she can be isolated and cherished, wanted and needed, taken with contracts and ceremonies. In either case the great creature does not miss the single entity subtracted from the whole any more than the hive misses the single bee. It goes on in its glissening, giggling, leggy immortality, forever replenished from the equation of children plus time, existing every spring, unchangingly and challengingly invulnerable – an exquisite reservoir called Girl, aware of being admired and saying “Drink me!,” knowing that no matter how deep the draughts, the level of sweetness in the reservoir remains the same forever. There are miles of beach and there were miles of bunnies along the tan Atlantic coast.
No, McGee is not politically correct. Another reason why I like this man. he continues with his favorite past time, cynically commenting on development and the modern life, the human zoo.
When the public beach ended I came to the great white wall of high rise condominiums which conceal the sea and partition the sky. They are compartmented boxes stacked high in sterile sameness. The balconied ghetto. Soundproof, by the sea. So many conveniences and security measures and safety factors that life at last is reduced to an ultimate boredom, to the great decisions of the day – which channel to watch and whether to swim in the sea or in the pool.
Classic MacDonald. And this disdain for middle class aspirations extends to our hero’s lifestyle. As he rejects the advances of a fabulously rich single woman, he muses, A lot of the good ones get away. They want to impose structure on my unstructured habits. It doesn’t work. If I wanted structure, I’d live in a house with a Florida room, have 2.7 kids, a dog, a cat, a smiling wife, two cars, a viable retirement and profit-sharing plan, a seven handicap and shortness of breath.
Invariably, McGee‘s sarcasm extends to financial institutions.
The lobby of the Southern National Bank and Trust Company takes up half of the ground floor of their new building on Biscayne. It is like three football fields. People at the far end are midgets, scurrying around in the cathedral lighting. The carpeting is soft and thick, dividing the lobby into function areas through the use of colors. Coral, lime, turquoise. The bank colors are pale blue and gold. The girls wear little blue and gold bank jackets with the initials SNB on the pocket, curled into a fanciful logo, the same logo that’s stitched into the carpet, mosaiced into the walls, embossed on the stationary, and watermarked into the checks. The male employees and officers up to ambassadorial rank wear pale blue and gold blazers. Everybody has been trained to smile at all times. The whole place looks like a huge, walk -in dental advertisement. There is probably also a bank song.
With commentary like this, the plot is almost secondary. McGee goes through the motions, separating the femme fatales from the dames with heart, weeding out the sociopaths from the merely greedy, commenting on race relations, Cuban society and of course sex. Then towards the end of each novel, he does some heavy lifting, almost gets killed, gets lucky and knocks out the bad guy with the full force of his brand of McGee justice. Florida’s slide towards doom and Jeb Bush is not halted by McGee’s actions, but perhaps, we might want to think, it is slowed for just a few beautiful breathless seconds. Then he’s off on another mission of sexual healing, sailing his ship down the coast and into the islands, disappearing into the void he created for himself. McGee would never have used facebook, would have resisted mobile phones, forever in search of friendship, quality of life, clean air and the next, slightly illegal haul. Above all, in almost every story, McGee bemoans the death of the American environment by fast and profit orientated development.
In Bright Orange for the Shroud he comments: Now, of course, having failed in every attempt to subdue the Glades by frontal attack, we are slowly killing it off by tapping the River of Grass. In the questionable name of progress, the state in its vast wisdom lets every two-bit developer divert the flow into drag-lined canals that give him ‘waterfront’ lots to sell. As far north as Corkscrew Swamp, virgin stands of ancient bald cypress are dying. All the area north of Copeland had been logged out, and will never come back. As the glades dry, the big fires come with increasing frequency. The ecology is changing with egret colonies dwindling, mullet getting scarce, mangrove dying of new diseases born of dryness.
McGee lived from 1964 (The Deep Blue Good-Bye) to 1984 (The Lonely Silver Rain). Each of his adventures was color coded. In the later novels, McGee becomes increasingly depressed about the violence in America. MacDonald’s last work was commissioned by the The U.S. Library of Congress. The resulting essay, Reading for Survival, is a conversation between McGee and Meyer on the importance of reading.The 26-page essay was released in a limited edition of 5,000 copies and can be found online here.
There’s a couple of lukewarm Travis McGee film adaptations and there have been rumors that Oliver Stone and Leonardo Di Caprio were going to tackle the first McGee novel, but nothing has materialized as yet.
Like I said, sad that I have plowed through every one of McGee’s adventures. I will just have to start reading them all over again.
Tom wrote: "Like I said, sad that I have plowed through every one of McGee’s adventures. I will just have to start reading them all over again. "I do that every so often, especially with some of my particular favorites in the series.
Tom you've perfectly encapsulated the Travis McGee series for me. I'm sure McDonald through McGee would have plenty to say about the current economic climate in the western world. McGee is a character all red blooded males aspire to be, but his character is suffused with intelligence and a cynical view of the world you have well and truly covered.
Reading your piece only increases my appetite to escape into the world created by the great John D McDonald again.
I am halfway through "A Tan and Sandy Silence" as we speak. I've read all the McGees, and re-read one every couple of years or so. Great stuff, great characters.
I found Deep Blue Good By last weekend at a used book store in Qualicum Beach, so I'll probably be giving it a shot before the end of the year. See if I can start a new series..
Bill, you're start with the first and one of the best. Steve, A Tan and Sandy Silence is also an incredible book. I can feel a trip to my loft space coming on.
Mackenzie ... I am enjoying my re-read of "A Tan and Sandy Silence," and getting close to the climax, but I have to say there are a couple of instances in which the author relies on coincidences that kind of threw me. I mean things like Travis just happens to run into acquaintances who can help him out at opportune times. (Trying to make my point without spoilers here!) It took a while to get rolling again after a good start, too, Otherwise, though, once it gets moving it is a page-turner.
Hi folks...looking for another Travis McGee thread, came across this one.Great discussion, all.
I'm on my third read of the series reading the first time in the late '60's. The second time about 10 years ago and since I'm reading about 15 different series, got my third read in with the other series. Finished Gold in Sept and that was #5 in the series.
Also, never kept the books from past reads so decided I was tired of that and keeping all those I have for my third time around.
I never tire of Travis McGee. Never, ever! I love Travis, he's my guy.
Anyone know of or would like D. R. Martin's blog link, "Travis McGee and Me?" Devoted entirely to Travis. If so, post here and I'll find it (the blog) and post. Busy this am or would do it now.
Nice to meet you fine folks who love Travis McGee.
Like many of you, I started read the series in my late teens but it wasn't until a few years ago that I got my hands on the last book in the series.I gave up on him twice. The first time was because I became tired of his 'preaching' about the damage being done to Florida by the increasing population of the state. The second time was after reading A Tan And Sandy Silence because the ending disturbed me. After watching a character die in a cruel way, McGee (in the closing chapter) went about his business as if nothing had happened.
Still, as others have said, it is a great series and I may have to re-read all the books.
Dave wrote: "Like many of you, I started read the series in my late teens but it wasn't until a few years ago that I got my hands on the last book in the series.I gave up on him twice. The first time was bec..."
Dave...unfortunately the preaching, as you call it, didn't change anything. The damage has been done and now some state and federal agencies are trying to fix what they let developers do to the state especially in south Florida. Where people live, they need water.
I'm a native living in north Florida. JDM was right about the damage being done to the state at the time.
I hear what you are saying, Cathy, and JDM was right. But, in my opinion, it didn't belong in his books. If he felt that strongly about it, he should have written a newspaper editorial or non-fiction book on the topic.I don't read thrillers and mysteries to have my consciousness of issues raised, I read them to be entertained.
One of the things that I really enjoyed about JDM (not only the Travis McGee series) was his comments on our society. You could see Travis grow with America over the course of the series. You could agree or disagree. However, JDM used his forum to entertain and educate (or aggravate) a much larger audience than he could have reached otherwise.I don't completely agree with an earlier post that McGee was a socialist. He was against corporate pillage and overreach. He was against bureaucracy. He was pro-individual and ranked individual responsibility for actions very highly. Overall, I think that he was a more complex character than some have given credit for.
Different Dave
Dave wrote: "I hear what you are saying, Cathy, and JDM was right. But, in my opinion, it didn't belong in his books. If he felt that strongly about it, he should have written a newspaper editorial or non-fic..."Ditto, Dave, I hear what you're saying, too. However, one reason I enjoyed the series so much was how JDM wove destruction of the environment into the series. I never thought it overwhelmed the story JDM wanted to tell through Travis and Meyer. I think it's what made the series special. My opinion, of course.
Writers write what they want and if a reader doesn't want to read it...move on to another series or author or book.
I've read when readers commented they 'didn't like the ending' or that this or that happened and they didn't like it. My response is write your own book with your own ending. Or put it down or throw it at the wall.
Guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
Dave wrote: "One of the things that I really enjoyed about JDM (not only the Travis McGee series) was his comments on our society. You could see Travis grow with America over the course of the series. You could..."Dave from Mexico...see now why you said Different Dave. That was a great 'heads up' and appreciated.
Didn't see the 'socialist' post. Difficult to respond to that.
And JDM was a complex person, no doubt. I don't normally get into in depth conversations about writers and where "they're coming from" since I just enjoy reading the book.
Agreed with all of what you said...especially JDM using his work to "entertain and educate." And you added aggravate but if so, then put the book down.
People can complain about TV series they hate, blah, blah, blah. Well, don't watch it.
CathyI agree with the "put it down" sentiment. I included the aggravate because it is indicative of the force of JDM's writing. If it doesn't infuriate someone, given the spectrum of beliefs in the US, then I don't think that it can be very educational.
Thanks for your comments.
Different Dave
Kathy said: Ditto, Dave, I hear what you're saying, too. However, one reason I enjoyed the series so much was how JDM wove destruction of the environment into the series. I never thought it overwhelmed the story JDM wanted to tell through Travis and Meyer. I think it's what made the series special. My opinion, of course.Guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
Yes, we will. And we've done it with respect for the other's opinion. I've seen a few post on Goodreads where that didn't happen.
Quillracer
Dave wrote: "CathyI agree with the "put it down" sentiment. I included the aggravate because it is indicative of the force of JDM's writing. If it doesn't infuriate someone, given the spectrum of beliefs in..."
Different Dave: Great point. Wish I would have said that.
Enjoying the conversation. So thanks for that!
Mackenzie wrote: "his scarred sun drenched body still in good shape..."When your body's in good shape it doesn't matter how old you get
Dave wrote: "I don't completely agree with an earlier post that McGee was a socialist...."
Nothing wrong with socialism. Native American Indians can attest to this.
I tended to take the rants against the influx of retirees, overbuilding and environmental issues pretty much as a part of McGee's personality ... probably because as Montana native, I and most of the people I knew were ranting against the same thing happening in Montana. Fact of life and unstoppable.What slowed me down a bit with the last few McGee books was a feeling of general depression ... McGee himself seemed less hopeful about things, his involvement with people seemed to have less depth and less emotion. It seemed to be particularly noticeable in "The Green Ripper". It seemed a bit better in the last book, Silver Rain ... but I've tended to skip several of the later books in my re-reads.
Sharon:Very thoughtful comment. I'll definitely remember that as I go through the series. (Third read, first read in late '60's early '70's.) Thinking back though I do recall a book or two towards the end which sounded melancholy.
Someone said that JDM knew he was closing out the series in Silver Rain therefore the storyline. Not saying anything further for fear of spoilers although not sure I can remember it clearly anyway.
Cathy wrote: "Someone said that JDM knew he was closing out the series in Silver Rain therefore the storyline. Not saying anything further for fear of spoilers although not sure I can remember it clearly anyway. "
I've always wondered the same thing. There were some things in that ending that I thought indicated a either a somewhat different direction or a closure of sorts. Could have gone either way, but since it did turn out to be the last one published, I have always felt that he intended it as the last book of the series.
Sharon wrote: "Cathy wrote: "Someone said that JDM knew he was closing out the series in Silver Rain therefore the storyline. Not saying anything further for fear of spoilers although not sure I can remember it ..."
Yes, me, too, thinking he intended as "The End" without really saying so.
Someone just liked my post of JDM "Reading for Survival" which was the last thing JDM ever wrote. Do you know of it? All these years of JDM on my shelf or hands and I just came across this essay of sorts, in April. Let me know if you want/need the link.
Did you all know that JDM also wrote a non-fiction book called "House Guests", about the pets he had over the years (mostly cats)? It's quite charming and may throw some light on TMs concern for the Doberman in "A Deadly Shade of Gold" and his other mention of animals in the series.
Susan:No, but any thrift bookstore I go in and see a JDM, it's mine. Find that one, it's mine!
Here's one for you...JDM was good friends with Dan Rowan who with Dick Martin had the TV show "Laugh-In."
A book was published which I have but haven't read, of their letters to each other, JDM and Rowan; A Friendship: The Letters of Dan Rowan and John D. MacDonald, 1967-1974.
The little I read about their friendship, led me think they had a disagreement of some kind. Will have to read the book, I guess.
I read all the series in my twenties and thirties and loved them. I was trying to describe them to my neighbour just last week which was the first time in twenty years I'd thought about them. Then I stumbled upon this topic! I am going to start again at the beginning.
Am listening to Nightmare in Pink now. He had a nice little observation about city dogs and poodles. I should collect these animal quotes.
Reading in order third time around and half way through Bright Orange...Travis blogger D. R. Martin said something akin to this book (number six) is the quintessential Travis McGee and I agree with that. It's great, simply great!
One of my favorite series of books, I've written a small review of The Deep Blue Good By on Goodreads and compared it favorably to Cape Fear. I think that McGee is a forerunner of Spenser. MacDonald's own views on the environment and society generally heavily influenced the books for the better.As a young teenager I came across a Travis McGee omnibus while on vacation which included The Quick Red Fox, Deadly Shade of Gold and Bright Orange for the Shroud. Those were a happy two weeks.
Great comment, David. I just finished Orange...my third time around beginning the first time in the late '60's.
JDM's Travis McGee series is considered by many writers to be a strong influence on development of their character and writing. Randy Wayne White especially, has said it many times.
D. R. Martin has the Travis and Me blog. He's got a review of all 21 books. But next year 2014, D. R. is gathering those "clones" of McGee.
He said recently he's starting with the Doc Ford series (Randy Wayne White) and I agree. Doc Ford series seems to me to be the most like Travis.
I've actually had 'Sanibel Flats' which I believe is the first Doc Ford book in my Amazon 'Saved for Later' basket for a while. I will have to give it a go when I finish some of my backlog which I've purchased and not yet read.I'm not pushing my blog but here is the piece of an article about some of my favorite books and when I read them which dealt with the Travis McGee stories:
Skipping back in time, to my mid-teens, I remember buying a Travis McGee Omnibus while I was on holidays and loving the character John D. MacDonald had created. The omnibus included The Quick Red Fox, Deadly Shade of Gold and Bright Orange for the Shroud. Again, in these pre-Amazon days a long time went by before I came across another Travis McGee novel and it was in that same Stockholm department store. They seemed to have at least half of the entire series and I devoured them at a rapid pace. McGee, “a knight errant in rusted armor, tilting at the windmills of the modern world” was a wonderful creation. I know that I will not be alone in tracing a lineage from McGee to Spenser to Elvis Cole, some of my favourite fictional investigators. McGee had a highly-developed morality but it was combined with a very unique world view, so his take-away from his adventures was often a little different that the typical hero might have. MacDonald’s knowledge of Florida and care about the environment way before it became fashionable also leant an authenticity and integrity to the stories not normally found in such short novels from the genre. People will know that MacDonald wrote Cape Fear but for me his scariest bad guy and someone up there with Dudley Smith from James Ellroy’s LA Quartet was Junior Allen from The Deep Blue Good-By. The blond, grinning, powerful Allen’s sociopathic treatment of the women he preys on is very unsettling and the final showdown with McGee on the storm-tossed boat absolutely riveting. Only later did I find out that The Deep Blue Good-By was the first of the 21 McGee novels.
Hi David: Yes, Sanibel Flats is the first in the Doc Ford series. If you enjoy Travis and JDM's writing, you should enjoy the Doc Ford series.
You named a few of the characters which I, too, believe have their lineage going back to Travis. I could add a few more if I could retrieve that list from my memory.
My very first read was Orange...then I figured out it was a series, so then read Blue next and continued in order, mostly that is. But Orange, in my mind, is the first book with all of the typical elements most fans agree are Travis McGee; the setting, the bad guy(s), development of south Florida, the woman (not Travis') and a number of smaller subjects which thread throughout the series.
Cape Fear...gotten to page eight or so a couple of time...too scary for me.
McDonald wrote many other great books including the twice filmed Cape Fear, but perhaps the fact that I feel I know McGee better then characters from one off books is the reason? Or is it that we all need a hero to look up to? Someone to do the right thing?
Whatever it is I miss McGee and his my envy of the fictional existence he lived.
I like to think he's out there still, yes older, but his grey eyes still bright and clear, his scarred sun drenched body still in good shape, living on the edge of life and taking 50% for things others won't or can't do.