My Man McGee

What I like about shopping at Habitat For Humanity is you never know what some fool might discard, wholly believing he’s jetting some useless bit of trash. I go there mostly for books, and mostly because the books are cheap, but I’m always on the lamb for the rare title or edition you’re unlikely to ever find at your local bookstore.

I was perusing the other day and came across a goldmine.

Some unwitting idgit had donated a whole stack (a very tall stack) of old, battered John D. MacDonald’s, all of them Travis McGees. Sweet Jumpin Jehovah!

Now, for the uninitiated, you may be wondering why this was such a find, why all the heavy breathing. If you haven’t read ol Johnny, well, my friends, you’re in for quite a treat. In fact, I envy you. You’re a MacDonald virgin, and you’re first ride, should you choose to take it, will be sweet indeed.

MacDonald was the last in a long line of what used to be called “pulp” writers, though by MacDonald’s era they no longer made “pulps” (paperback books made from cheap pulp paper). But MacDonald was squarely in the tradition, coming on the heels of James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammet and Ross MacDonald. However, while ol Johnny may have waltzed out of the crime noir closet, his most famous creation, Travis McGee, was most definitely a white-knight, a true-blue romantic, tossing off the black cynicism of his predecessors.

In the 21 Travis McGee novels, MacDonald mastered a fluid, clear and startlingly immediate style so smooth it makes you want to weep. Every line rings true. Every line seems easy, off the cuff. Like the finest vodka, you never even know you’re getting drunk, it’s all so damn fine. And let me tell you, writing like this, where it seems so easy, is so damn hard to write.

The only other writer I’ve ever read who writes as smoothly is Stephen King, and King (surprise, surprise) grew up reading MacDonald. “He is the great entertainer of our age,” King said. It is my long held theory that King is MacDonald’s greatest apprentice, having learned much at the feet of the master (and here I’m taking credit, cause I’ve never heard any critic anywhere mention these two writers in the same breath).

McGee is not a detective in the classic sense. He is not a cop or a private investigator. By trade, he is a “salvage consultant,” a freelancer who works when he feels like it. Folks come to McGee when they’ve lost something and when going to the authorities is, for whatever reason, not the best option. McGee gets it back for them, and keeps half the value.

We meet McGee, the boat-bum Quixote, in The Deep Blue Goodbye:

“Home is the Busted Flush, 52-foot barge-type houseboat, Slip F-18, Bahia Mar, Lauderdale.

“Home is where the privacy is. Draw all the opaque curtains, button the hatches, and with the whispering drone of the air conditioning masking all the sounds of the outside world, you are no longer cheek to jowl with the random activities aboard the neighbor craft. You could be in a rocket beyond Venus, or under the icecap.

"Because it is a room aboard, I call it the lounge, and because that is one of the primary activities.

“I was sprawled on a deep curve of the corner couch, studying charts of the keys, trying to work up enough enthusiasm and energy to plan moving the Busted Flush to a new mooring for a while. She has a pair of Hercules diesels, 58 HP each, that will chug her along at a stately six knots. I didn’t want to move her. I like Lauderdale. But it had been so long I was wondering if I should.”

I’ve read just about every mystery writer on the planet, but there isn’t one I like half as much as John MacDonald. I have great admiration for Elmore Leonard, for John Sandford, and am quite enraptured by the Italian writer Andre Camelleri, but none of them compare to MacDonald. To go one further, there isn’t a character in fiction I’d enjoy spending time with more than my man Trav. I’ve read MacDonald into the ground, cruising through more than one novel so many times the books have fallen apart, literally shedding pages as I read, and still I never tire of him.

The first McGee novel I read was A Tan and Sandy Silence, but one can start anywhere (though I wouldn’t start at the very end with The Lonely Silver Rain). There isn’t a bad book in the series, and I don’t think I could recommend one over another. On the whole, I give them all my highest acclimation: they’ve kept me good company on my search, may they keep you good company on yours.

Enjoy.