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D.R., my memory must be failing me. It's been years since I've read any of the novels. I thought the McGee novels were based in Cedar Key, Florida. A cool place to visit, but don't expect pristine beaches.
Scout wrote: "D.R., my memory must be failing me. It's been years since I've read any of the novels. I thought the McGee novels were based in Cedar Key, Florida. A cool place to visit, but don't expect pristine ..."The stories mostly took place around FL; but many took place elsewhere (Chicago, southeast desert, Mexico, etc). But Trav's home base was Bahia Mar in Ft. Lauderdale.
Hi Scout: Yo, bro, another author we have in common? Saw your name and had to go back to refresh my memory. Checked out D. R.'s blog and will indeed spend some time on there. Signed up, in fact to follow.
The Busted Flush, Bahia Mar Marina, Ft. Lauderdale? Oh, sorry D. R., you said that. But Scout, jogging your memory? JDM (and Travis) is the reason mysteries are my favorite genre. I still have some of my favorite Travis on my bookshelf. Read in the 70's then re-read a couple of years ago. Both times, back to back. Travis is addictive. Love such addictions
Good reading! Cathy
There's a big gap in my mystery/thriller reading - I've never read this amazing author's work. I think Sue Grafton said he was an inspiration to her own writing.
Robin wrote: "There's a big gap in my mystery/thriller reading - I've never read this amazing author's work. I think Sue Grafton said he was an inspiration to her own writing."Robin: I'm somewhat envious if you haven't read MacDonald's Travis McGee series. However, every time I read one (provided enough time has passed) I'm delighted just like the first time. Delighted even if not enought time passed!
Start with the first, The Deep Blue Good-Bye, and you'll be hooked. There are 20 in the series, I believe, and they're quick reads.
I think he was an inspiration to many writers. He (MacDonald) was indeed that good.
Good reading to you and start filling that gap.
Thanks, Cathy! Now I really need to get reading. Deep Blue Good-Bye, here I come, girl.
Robin! Robin! Robin! I am so, so very proud of you! Gosh, I really am. I sure hope you enjoy them as much as I did. I have never, ever in 30 years talked to a person who has read Travis and said they didn't like him. Some books, like all series, some books are better than others but they are few and far between. Again, good for you. In fact I've been working on something this am, haven't finished up but will send to you in a little bit. A surprise for taking such a bold step, quickly and firmly, beginning your first Travis McGee.
Congratulations, friend!
Cathy D.
Cathy wrote: "Robin wrote: "There are 20 in the series, I believe, and they're quick reads."21, actually. And reading SILVER, the last one, is always bittersweet.
D. R.: Sorry, I was coming from memory...and quite proud that I came so close to the correct answer. Yes, I remember the last go around reading and thought, oh, darn, the last one. Kind of depressing for me at the time, yes, bittersweet is indeed the word. An opportunity to begin again though. A new day for my favorite guy, Travis McGee.
Excellent! I'll have to check it out!
My Debt to John D. McDonaldby Robert J. Ray
Role Model for a Fledgling Writer
Matt Murdock, my detective hero, sprang from John D. McDonald, the prolific crime writer (1916-1986) who created Travis McGee. McGee, the hard guy protagonist, starred in a 21-novel series that ran from 1964 to 1985.
McDonald wrote 78 books. The titles of the twenty-one McGee books were coded with a specific color: The Deep-Blue Goodbye, Darker than Amber, and A Deadly Shade of Gold. The first Cape Fear film (starring Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, and Polly Bergen, 1962) was an adaptation of McDonald’s novel, The Executioners.
Like Chandler’s Philip Marlowe (and later Robert B. Parker’s Spenser), Travis McGee narrates his stories from the First Person. He calls himself a “salvage expert,” which means he helped friends in trouble, friends who could get no help from cops or lawyers. For his fee, McGee took fifty per cent.
For thousands of male readers trapped in desk jobs and sedentary lifestyles (I was a college prof who sat around a lot, feet on the desk), Travis McGee offered a momentary escape. He was single, handsome, witty, and smart. He was the archetypal hero, St. George on a white horse, who slew the dragon and rescued the maiden. McGee was a smart guy, with a wry wit. He was a knight-errant who lived on a houseboat, The Busted Flush, that he had won in a poker game.
A hero needs a sidekick. Holmes had his Watson; Spenser had Hawk. And Travis McGee’s sidekick was an alter ego named Meyer, a Ph.D. in economics, who took over the explanations, saving McGee from drowning in pages of exposition.
For each McGee book, a new lady-friend stepped onstage. When the book ended, the ladies exited, leaving the stage empty—except for McGee, Meyer, and The Busted Flush. When McGee needed motivating, McDonald the writer killed the lady-friend to stoke the fires of vengeance.
The Birth of Matt Murdock
When I wrote Bloody Murdock (1986), I was hoping for a series similar to the books starring Travis McGee. But I was not a fiction writer, not a teller of tales. I had no practice in character development or dialogue. I didn’t know about the need for an establishing shot to lock down location. I had yet to learn the importance of motivation, agenda, and core story. I had taught expository writing, guiding students through essay writing. I had read novels, but I knew nothing about writing one.
The questions still haunt me: How do you start writing your novel? What do you do first? Where do you open the story? How do you hook the busy reader? How do you get those characters out of cars, down corridors, through doorways, and into rooms?
When in doubt: imitate your betters.
I aped John D. McDonald. He had McGee. I had Murdock. McGee had Meyer, the brainy sidekick. Murdock had Wally St. Moritz, smart, well-read, educated, and sedentary. McGee’s home was his houseboat, The Busted Flush. Murdock had a bachelor’s apartment above a surf shop, The Silver Surfer, on the beach near the Newport Pier. McGee’s playground was Florida, with forays into Mexico and the Caribbean. Murdock’s playground was Southern California—Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Irvine—a rollicking source of money and power.
My hero needed a voice. I tried Murdock in Third Person—that voice, distant and authorial, morphed into a prologue—and then I settled on First Person, like McGee. Like Philip Marlowe, Chandler’s Los Angeles sleuth. And like Spenser, who operates with steady, brilliant success in Boston.
In my search for the right opening, I wrote hundreds of pages—and those were the days of the typewriter, carbon paper copies, and bottles of Whiteout. I wrote a dozen versions of Page One with Murdock waking up. It seemed logical and “natural.” The day starts, the book starts. But you can’t start your book where the first move is a yawn, and the next move is a weary stretch.
Desperate, I painted word-pictures of the Newport Pier. I sketched the ocean beyond the pier. I daubed in a sleek sailboat sliding across the horizon. Ahoy there, yon sailboat: Anything happening out there? Anything I can use to open my book?
I tried opening with dialogue—it sounded wooden—then with a masterful monologue from Wally St. Moritz. Nothing worked, and I was avoiding the important stuff: killer, victim, crime, crime scene, discovery of the corpse.
Pray for an Arresting Image
If you are a writer, you pray for the right image—a trigger for your writing brain—and so one day my wife Margot and I had lunch at the Blue Beat on the Newport Pier and when we came outside I saw the figure of a girl walking along the pier, quick steps, medium heels. She had red hair like Brenda Starr, girl reporter from the comic book pages of my youth. She was willowy, the writer’s code for young and perhaps innocent. That unnamed girl with her skirt pressed tight to her legs by the wind, her hair flying like a TV ad for L’Oreal, that distant vanishing girl turned into a character named Gayla Jean Kirkwood, a Hollywood starlet wannabe, fresh off the Greyhound from Texas.
I costumed her in a party dress, rushed her to a fancy party deep in Laguna Canyon, where she hooked up with a small-time film star who was making a deal with the killer. Back then, I had a Ph.D. in literature—but I didn’t know that when you write mysteries you better create the killer first.
Create your Killer First
When Jack Remick and I wrote The Weekend Novelist Writes a Mystery, our first lesson was: create your killer first. By then, I had written five Murdocks. And with Jack’s analytical eye, I saw, at last, that the key to each book was the killer.
To get to the killer in Bloody Murdock, I followed the trail of the victim. Gayla Jean lusted for stardom. She took up with a man who promised to help her. He was a rich man with a big house in Laguna Canyon. His name was Philo Waddell and the opening scene-sequence takes us inside Philo’s house, into the heart of a hot party where the entertainment is a series of cockfights. Philo’s guest list is an eclectic mix of people from Hollywood, people from the rich beach cities, and Mafia people from Las Vegas. To find out why Philo kills Gayla Jean, you need to read the book. But for me, Philo was the key. I stumbled on him. With each page, his evil grew. By the time readers reach the climax, they want Philo dead. If you are a writer, you can learn more about these writing tricks at:
weekendnovelist.com
Check it out. I'll be curious to know which colors are your favorites. (If you're a McGee fan, you'll know just what I mean.)