The Deep Blue Good-By (Travis McGee Mysteries)

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This family was a circus act, balanced on a small platform atop a swaying pole, as the crowd goes ahhh, anticipating disaster. A vain foolish man and a careless young wife and a tortured girl, swaying to the long drum roll. When it fell, the unmarked House Beautiful would sell readily, the Lincoln would e acquired by a Mexican dentist.” (Future novels don’t make this attempt very often) Returning to Candle Key to rape and corrupt the lonely woman who found him distasteful had been foolish. (p. 144) Cathy has been morally violated by a ruthless man, and when she gets Travis McGee involved, he discovers more victims in even worse case. Moored in Lauderdale aboard the 52-foot houseboat Busted Flush (won where else but in a private poker session), Travis McGee is introduced idling the afternoon away with Chookie McCall, a dancer and choreographer who hasn't known Travis long enough to figure out whether he really does find things for people, keeping half of its value. Chookie just so happens to know someone looking for something and has invited her over. McGee hears the woman out. Cathy Kerr is a dancer whose father served in the Air Transport Command in India and Burma during the war and brought home an item of awesome value. Cathy just doesn't know what it was. A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.

So you can imagine my surprise when much later I discovered that Trav was not real! "What do you mean, he doesn't exist! What are you saying, Cathy…that he's just some character in a book?" I should caution against picturing Travis as a knight in shining armor. He is quite rusty and amoral, both in his methods of obtaining information which don't rule out torture and intimidation, and in his own predatory interest in women. Willy Lazeer is an acquaintance. His teeth and his feet hurt. He hates the climate, the Power Squadron, the government and his wife. The vast load of hate has left him numbed rather than bitter. In appearance, it is as though somebody bleached Sinatra, skinned him, and made Willy wear him.” For now we’ll have to content ourselves with the McGees we do have on film, and the books, always the books. In the past McGee has been played by Rod Taylor, in the 1970 film version of Darker than Amber , while Sam Elliot wore the flip flops in a 1983 TV movie titled simply Travis McGee , although it was based on The Empty Copper Sky . Chook reappears now and then in future McGee novels, and very surprisingly in the last ever McGree "The Lonely Silver Rain".

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In his first adventure Trav helps Cathy, from Candle Key, in the Keys of course. Cathy, he helps Cathy. It's meant to be, it's in the stars, Trav. In any case, agreeing or disagreeing with the protagonist's opinions or manners doesn't always determine whether you become interested or entertained by a writer, and I must admit, I could barely put the darn book down. For most fast readers, this is positively a book to be read in one sitting, but I am one of those unfortunate readers that contemplates the hidden meaning of every word, thus it required me four sittings. For me, MacDonald's writing was something that I could almost touch, and the action was in a way non-stop, that is, unless he was handing out a spoonful of Travis McGee wisdom to which I didn't always concur, but I couldn't help but appreciate. John D.MacDonald writer of over 75 novels and 500 short stories has been widely viewed as having influenced numerous writers living today: Hiaasen, Vonnegut, White, Hall, Koontz (who considered MacDonald his "literary Guru"), and Stephen King, a very good friend of McDonald and to whom the MacDonald estate gave its only serious consideration to allowing another author to create a McGee sequel (for good reasons both financial and ethical, this did not happen). Many other authors have considered MacDonald to be influential in their own work. This is the first John D. MacDonald book I've read and probably won't be the last. MacDonald really knows how to build the suspense. Junior Allen is a first degree douche bag and a good villain. You can't help but read faster and faster, eager to see him get what's coming to him. The writing is really good and the characters of Travis and Junior are well done.

McGee is an engaging character and I’m looking forward to reading the next two stories in this anthology, and also the forthcoming film version starring Christian Bale and Rosamund Pike (although this has been delayed as Bale has injured his knee). James Mangold will direct the film, and the script is being written by Dennis Lehane and Scott Frank. Travis McGee was not on a search for enlightenment, but you may find some when reading MacDonald’s series. An insightful know-it-all, a thoughtful man of action, McGee is as fascinating when laying bad guys out as he is when lamenting a Florida landscape that was then disappearing and now is no more. But it still exists in John D MacDonald’s books. And crime fiction readers owe Random House their thanks for keeping old Florida and its guardian alive. I might wish for the original Robert McGinnis illustrations that graced the covers of first-edition McGee adventures, but the sexual politics displayed might mark the books as dated and repel more readers than they attract. Besides, the covers are secondary. shai6935 (28 September 1970). "Darker Than Amber (1970)". IMDb. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list ( link)For anyone considering reading the Travis McGee series (first book published in 1964 with a total of 21 books in the series) this book should definitely be read first. It lays the ground work for who McGee really is, how he feels about society, women and Florida in general. These are important basics for reading the series since the character for me, is so very important.

Who am I to keep from putting my shoulder to the wheel? Why am I not thinking about an estate and how to protect it? Gad, woman, I could be writing a million dollars a year in life insurance. I should be pulling a big oar in the flagship of life.” (Is this really Travis or, I believe more likely, MacDonald talking about himself?) These are the playmate years, and they are demonstrably fraudulent. The scene is reputed to be acrawl with adorably amoral bunnies to whom sex is a pleasant social favor. The new culture. And they are indeed present and available, in exhausting quantity, but there is a curious tastelessness about them. A woman who does not guard and treasure herself cannot be of very much value to anyone else. Travis McGee is a private hardboiled troubleshooter… He is tough but compassionate… He boasts nitty-gritty wisdom… He scorns the system… I guess Chook is about twenty-three or -four. Her face is a little older than that. It has that stern look you see in old pictures of the Plains Indians. At her best, it is a forceful and striking face, redolent of strength and dignity. At worst it sometimes would seem to be the face of a Dartmouth boy dressed for the farcical chorus line. But that body, seen more intimately than ever before, was incomparably, mercilessly female, deep and glossy, rounded under the tidy little fatty layer of girl pneumatics with useful muscle. This book was published in 1964. Clues in the text place the action in 1962. So it was a time of transition--not yet the "'60s," which began in 1967, but the sexual revolution has begun and the times they are achangin'. It was a pretty confusing time to come of age. I was there.

The novel is fast paced and tightly written, free of bloat and well balanced with dialogue, social commentary and live action. The main appeal for me was in getting to know Travis and I look forward to spending more time in his company. I don't know yet if the novel was filmed, but I would sure be interested in a movie version. They have been taught that if you are sunny, cheery, sincere, group-adjusted, popular, the world is yours, including barbecue pits, charge plates, diaper service, percale sheets, friends for dinner, washer-dryer combinations, colour slides of the kiddies on the home projector, and eternal whimsical romance. So they all come smiling and confident and unskilled into a technician’s world, and in a few years they learn that it is all going to be grinding and brutal and hateful and precarious.

Beyond research, there is a beautiful love story. I would say that, almost, it is the main plot and that the rest develops from the love so tender and so complicated that arises between them. He's a man of strong moral principles, full of arrogance and conceit, a man who dislikes the America of the sixties yet happily takes advantage of it. He'll take a beating and keep on coming. He's a tough guy with a cynical edge. I can see why he and John D. MacDonald were so highly thought of as he is the perfect update on the hard-boiled noir hero of the previous generation and his influence can be felt even today, Dave Robiceaux springs to mind most easily as benefitting from his creators affection for Travis McGee.

Who stars in The Deep Blue Good-by: Cast List

Following complications of an earlier heart bypass operation, MacDonald slipped into a coma on December 10 and died at age 70, on December 28, 1986, in St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was survived by his wife Dorothy (1911-1989) and a son, Maynard. Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Allen is the nastiest villain I’ve come across recently and richly deserves his hunting-down by Travis. There’s a very well done horror-movie moment at the end which seems in keeping with his character.