Travis McGee

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Travis McGee is a fictional character and amateur sleuth created by prolific American mystery writer John D. MacDonald. McGee appeared in 21 novels, from The Deep Blue Good-by in 1964 to The Lonely Silver Rain in 1984.

1 Profile
2 About the Travis McGee novels
3 Novels
4 Adaptations
5 External links

[edit] Profile

Travis McGee lives on a custom 52-foot barge-type houseboat dubbed The Busted Flush (for a pivotal poker hand in the game during which he won it), docked at Slip F-18 at Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A self-described "beach bum" who takes his retirement "in installments", McGee prefers to take on new jobs only when the spare cash (besides a "reserve fund") in his hidden safe aboard the Flush gets low. McGee also owns a converted and souped-up Rolls Royce he calls Miss Agnes. His business card simply says "Salvage Consultant", and almost all of his business comes by word-of-mouth. His clients are usually people who have been deprived of something important (typically by unscrupulous yet legal means) and have no way to regain it. McGee's usual fee is half the value of the item stolen, if recovered, and those who object to such a seemingly high fee are reminded that getting back half of something is better than getting nothing at all. Although the missing items are often tangible, such as cash or jewels, in several books McGee is asked to locate a missing person and, in one instance, the object stolen is a reputation.

Physically, McGee is a big, exceptionally tough man. A Korean War veteran (though, as with many long-running characters, later books are less exacting about exactly which war Travis served in), he had been a college football player for nearly two years in the 1950s before a knee injury forced him into retirement, and for many years afterward he retained the quickness and agility that had allowed him to play at the professional level. He is 6 feet 4 inches (1.95 m) tall and, although deceptively slim-looking at his "fighting weight" of 205 lb (93 kg), he has a strong bone structure -- usually exemplified by thick, very strong wrists that occasionally serve as a deterrent to the more perspicacious of his adversaries in deciding whether to tangle with him or not. McGee often discusses his fitness regimen, usually in terms of regaining his fitness after a lazy period -- swimming and sprinting are frequently mentioned. In the final novel, McGee is described as practicing the Chinese art of Tai Chi Chuan.

Travis McGee's early life and family are never described in much detail -- the only detail regarding his relatives are a brief mention of a brother, with whom Travis, after getting out of the army, had intended to go into business, and a passing mention of parents in The Lonely Silver Rain. The brother was swindled out of his business in some kind of scam (never described in great detail) involving a woman he was dating and a male accomplice, and he committed suicide. Travis apparently ended up killing both the woman and her accomplice. This dramatic incident is described in only a few paragraphs in chapter two of Bright Orange for the Shroud and is only a hint to the origin of his outlook on life.

Although a playboy who goes through a long string of female companions during the course of the series, McGee has a dispassionate enough view of life to understand what this says about himself. This is part of an introspective nature that frequently appears throughout the series, with digressions about American society of the 1960s through 1980s, with particular notice paid to the changing Florida environment.

But unlike previous cynical fictional detectives such as Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, McGee is not yet world-weary. He still has his sense of outrage. In a classic commentary in Bright Orange for the Shroud, McGee muses,

"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."

This was from a paperback originally published in 1965 when the general public was still not conversant with the concept of environmentalism.

McGee does have a sidekick of sorts, in his best friend Dr. Meyer ("Just 'Meyer', please," he would insist), an internationally known and respected economist who lives on a cabin cruiser of his own near McGee's at Bahia Mar, the John Maynard Keynes, and later, after the Keynes is blown up, aboard its replacement, the Thorstein Veblen. There is no definite statement whether Meyer is a first or last name, [not true--he is introduced once as "G. Ludwig Meyer."] although the tendency of strangers to address Meyer as "Dr. Meyer" would seem to indicate it is probably his surname. Both Meyer's boats are jammed full of books and treatises, ranging far beyond simple economic theory. For instance, Meyer is a serious chess aficionado and amateur psychologist. Meyer serves as Travis's anchor when McGee's own inner compass seems to be skewed, as well as provides the formal education that the street-smart McGee lacks.

Some world-weariness does eventually creep into McGee's character, perhaps because the 1960s Florida in which he originated no longer exists. The only direct indications of his age ever given are comments that he had served in the Korean War, and until the 1980s he seems ageless. But as the story progresses, minor recurring characters began to drop away and it becomes apparent that McGee himself is getting older, along with his creator. In later novels such as The Green Ripper and Free Fall in Crimson, there is a sense of desperation that the violence in the world is too senseless to be explained and will never end. Much of that dissipates with the ending of The Lonely Silver Rain, which became the final volume when MacDonald died in 1986. (Rumors[1] of another final McGee novel, possibly narrated by Meyer, entitled A Black Border for McGee and to be published posthumously, have never been confirmed.)

[edit] About the Travis McGee novels

The twenty-one novels featuring amateur sleuth Travis McGee each has a color named in its title. The first three books in the Travis McGee series were published simultaneously in March 1964, a highly unusual publishing strategy. According to MacDonald, he had earlier written an introductory novel about McGee that he burned as being unsatisfactory. Also, according to MacDonald, he had originally named the character Dallas McGee, but after the assassination of President John Kennedy, he decided that name had too many negative connotations. He was searching for a first name for McGee when a friend suggested that he look at the names of the many Air Force bases in California. MacDonald's attention was caught by Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, and he named his character accordingly.

McGee has been called the first great modern Florida adventurer, preceding characters and situations that appeared in novels by authors such as Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen, James W. Hall and Les Standiford. Hiaasen specifically acknowledged his debt in an introduction he wrote for a new edition of The Deep Blue Good-By in 1994, commenting that even though MacDonald was now eight years gone, he believed McGee was still around, probably sipping gin on the deck of the Busted Flush and pondering whatever it was that Florida had become or was becoming. Singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett expressed similar sentiments in the lyrics of the song "Incommunicado".

Many of the science fiction novels and stories of author Spider Robinson also contain references to Travis McGee.

Unknown to most followers of McGee, the Library of Congress's "Center for the Book" commissioned a short work by MacDonald. He responded with an essay entitled "Reading for Survival", which 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 was available for a small contribution to the Center for the Book.

[edit] Novels

The Deep Blue Good-by (1964)
Nightmare in Pink (1964)
A Purple Place for Dying (1964)
The Quick Red Fox (1964)
A Deadly Shade of Gold (1965)
Bright Orange for the Shroud (1965)
Darker than Amber (1966)
One Fearful Yellow Eye (1966)
Pale Gray for Guilt (1968)
The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper (1968)
Dress Her in Indigo (1969)
The Long Lavender Look (1970)
A Tan and Sandy Silence (1971)
The Scarlet Ruse (1972)
The Turquoise Lament (1973)
The Dreadful Lemon Sky (1974)
The Empty Copper Sea (1978)
The Green Ripper (1979)
Free Fall in Crimson (1981)
Cinnamon Skin (1982)
The Lonely Silver Rain (1984)

[edit] Adaptations

Two attempts to translate Travis McGee to the movies or television were not particularly successful. Rod Taylor played McGee in Darker Than Amber, released in 1970, while Sam Elliott played him in the television movie of The Empty Copper Sea, titled "Travis McGee," which aired in 1983. The latter film inexplicably makes McGee a resident of California, eliminating the Florida locales so central to the McGee novels. MacDonald was approached in about 1967 for permission to create a TV series out of McGee, but he adamantly refused, feeling that the public would stop reading the books if McGee were on television regularly.

Many of the audiobook versions of the novels are read by actor Darren McGavin.