In twenty-one mysteries written over as many years, John D. MacDonald may have created the most riveting unlicensed private investigator in American suspense writing. Beginning with The Deep Blue Goodbye (1964), and ending with The Lonely Silver Rain (1985), Travis McGee worked as a “salvage consultant,” helping friends-of-friends recover what had been illegally or quasi-legally stolen from the them – for half the value of the item stolen. McGee was the last resort, so after the victims had exhausted every traditional route to recovery, or wished to avoid the legal route entirely, keeping half the value of what they had lost sounded better than recovering nothing at all.
Travis McGee’s past remains cloudy throughout the series – he’s of indeterminate age, and parents and a brother are all the family that are referenced, albeit never in detail. He seems to have been raised in the Midwest, but disdains “states that begin with an I.” He fought in the Army, but we are left to assume he fought in the Korean War. Never married, as far as we know. He’s tall, deeply scarred, deeply tanned, with gray-blue eyes and unruly sandy-blonde hair. He lives on a houseboat on Bahia Mar, Ft. Lauderdale, only working when he has to, preferring to enjoy his retirement in stages, whenever the cash is adequate.
To say that Travis’ methods are unorthodox is an understatement to the extreme, and his investigative style is the essence of why MacDonald’s creative writing skill is so widely acknowledged. Short of exterminating innocents, McGee rarely hesitates to do whatever is necessary to make a recovery for a client and a chunk of retirement for himself – but he is no automaton. He surprises himself with his need to live close to the edge of death, and often questions the reckless methods he uses to expose a thief. While steadfastly refusing a existence that includes a wife, a mortgage, kiddies and church, he also never quite convinces himself that his lifestyle is not a vacuous, moral fraud. With rare exceptions, McGee will turn away women, even the beautiful, famous and wealthy ones, who view sex as purely recreational, but there is always room aboard the Busted Flush, his beloved houseboat, for a member of the fairer sex with a broken wing in need of healing, and who views intimacy as a chance to transcend the essential void of loneliness.
Yet no wimp is Travis. He’s built like an offensive tackle, but moves like a linebacker, and is as crafty as a pro quarterback. He takes on organized crime, crooked CEO’s, swamp rats, and professional con men. He’s equally comfortable sweating through a crafty interrogation as saying hello by busting a knee. Within the first pages on Chapter One of each of the books, MacDonald has McGee thinking fast to stay alive, and the action rolls through each story to an unexpected, smartly crafted ending.
If you read one Travis McGee, you will read them all, several times. The greatest crime writers of our time credit McDonald’s McGee for their seminal inspiration to create a great fictional PI. I envy anyone who still has the chance to read any of the Travis McGee novels for the first time.
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