Travis McGee

Created by John D. MacDonald
(1916-86)

“Travis McGee is the last of the great knights-errant: honorable, sensual, skillful, and tough. I can’t think of anyone who has replaced him. I can’t think of anyone who would dare”
— Donald Westlake

Beach bum. Salvage consultant. Recoverer of misplaced goods. Ladies’ man. Mender of broken hearts. Environmentalist. Crank. Master of sexual healing. Former college football star. Decorated soldier. Connaiseur of gin. Man’s man, and ladies’ man. Cynical knight errant.

Colourful TRAVIS McGEE is taking his retirement on the installment plan, working when he needs to, and pretty much living life the way he damn well pleases. He lives on his “yacht,” The Busted Flush, a 52-foot barge type houseboat with twin diesels, at the Fort Lauderdale marina, drives Miss Agnes, a bastardized 1936 Rolls-Royce he’s converted into a pickup truck and painted a gawd-awful blue, eats and drinks well, and lives the good life, all financed by his job as a “salvage consultant.”

From his debut in 1964 with The Deep Blue Goodbye, to his final appearance in 1984’s The Lonely Silver Rain, the tall, sandy-haired, 6′-4″ McGee appeared in twenty-one novels, each with a colour in the title, and remains one of the best, and most beloved private eyes of all time (even if he wasn’t licensed, and at times acted more like Robin Hood than Philip Marlowe).

Although the books sold like hotcakes, they never quite made the jump successfully into another medium. A 1970 theatrical release, Darker Than Amber, based on the 1966 novel of the same name and featuring the suitably-chunky Rod Taylor as McGee, was disappointing. Taylor wasn’t bad in the role, but the acting in the flick from some of the rest of the cast is so wooden you could get splinters in your eyes watching it too closely. Nice location shots, though, and the bad guy was genuinely creepy.

But a 1983 made-for-TV film, The Empty Copper Sea (and pilot for a potential series) was just wrong, wrong, wrong, no matter how you looked at it. Somnolent Magnum P.I./Marlboro Man-lookalike Sam Elliot wasn’t even a half-good choice to play McGee, even if he could wake up. And substituting California for McGee’s beloved Florida? A series was never developed from this sorry mess. Thank god.

The McGee books did, however, gave birth to a whole sub-genre of detective fiction — the Florida adventurer. MacDonald’s concerns over the ecological rape of Florida and his disgust for the greedy, corrupt forces that are drive it are reflected in Geoffrey Norman’s Morgan Hunt, James Hall’s Thorn, John Lutz’s Carver and Carl Hiassen’s crazed desparadoes and lost rescuers. It’s there that the true spirit of MacDonald’s tarnished, shambling beach bum knight lives on.

RUMOURS

• One of the more enduring myths in the P.I. genre is that there is a final McGee, A Black Border for McGee, locked away somewhere. However, despite comments made by MacDonald himself, shortly before his death, both his widow and his publisher deny that any such book exists. But the final book in the series, The Lonely Silver Rain (1984), does have a rather elegiac feel to it, as if both MacDonald and McGee knew that their time was over. As George Pelecanos has pointed out, McGee was “the embodiment of (early 60s) male wish-fulfillment.” That the series lasted so long is a testament not just to McGee’s character, but to MacDonald’s ability to tell a story, and captivate an audience.

THE EVIDENCE

• “Being an adult means accepting those situations where no action is possible.”
  — Travis in The Green Ripper (1979)

• “We are all comical, touching, slapstick animals walking on our hindlegs.”
  — Dress Her in Indigo (1971)
• “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.”
  — Travis in Bright Orange for a Shroud (1965)
• “The early bird who gets the worm works for somebody who comes in late and owns the worm farm.”
  — The Dreadful Lemon Sky (1974)
• “She is vintage 1936, and apparently some previous owner had some unlikely disaster happen to the upper half of her rear end and solved the problem in an implausible way. Some other idiot had her painted a horrid electric blue. When I found her squatting, shame-faced, in the back row of a gigantic car lot, I bought her at once and named her after a teacher I had in the fourth grade whose hair was that same shade of blue.”
  — McGee on Miss Agnes inThe Deep Blue Good-by (1964)

UNDER OATH

• “Commercially speaking, there has never been a smarter creation than Travis McGee. He is the embodiment of male wish-fulfillment. No nine-to-five job, lives by his own set of rules, resides on a houseboat, drinks but is not a drunk, tall, handsome, good with his fists but not a bully, etc. All of the women McGee sleeps with are built like centerfolds, and, more importantly, most of them conveniently kick before that bothersome issue of commitment comes to the forefront (one mystery store in New York actually has an annual Travis McGee Always the Bridesmaid Never the Bride Award in honor of the latest murdered female companion to a male series character). So McGee is the man we–okay, most of us–would like to see when we look in the mirror. And, yeah, I love the books. I even named my old dog, Travis, after McGee.”
  The McGee books are early 60s timepieces (the hero’s Hefner-like, paternal attitude towards women) in the same way that Spillane’s books represent a certain kind of attitude (paranoid, racist, homophobic) from the 50s. Think of them on one hand as social records, and try not to judge them from the perspective of our more “enlightened” present. When a modern writer tries to approximate that attitude in a period book (for the sake of his own street-cred or to maintain a rep of cool) is when the issue becomes more complicated and problematic.”
  — George Pelecanos on Rara Avis, April 2001
• “… possibly the old houseboat is tied there still; McGee on deck, tending to fresh bruises, sipping his Boodles; watching the sun slide from the sky over Las Olas Boulevard… Anyway, that’s what I want to believe. If he’s gone, I prefer not to know.”
  — Carl Hiaasen ponders McGee’s current whereabouts
• “One of the great sagas in American fiction.”
  — Robert B. Parker
• “To diggers a thousand years from now…the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.”
  — Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• “Travis McGee had the right idea. Retirement days should be taken early and often.”
  — J. Michael Blue, in his novel Justified Crimes
• “If you’re looking for for short thrillers that offer moral complexity, read like rockets, and have some crucial Looney Tunes in their souls, there are only two names worth knowing: the writer John D. MacDonlad and his laidback anti-hero Travis McGee. in the spinner rack in heaven’s drugstore, these are the books I hope to find.”
  — Dwight Garner (June-July 2016, Esquire)
• “Why do I love (The Green Ripper)? Because it’s perfectly written without an ounce of fat on it, and because it pays off the entire arc of Travis McGee up to that point: There is only so much death one man can take before he starts to dole it out himself.”
  — Peter Swanson in John D. Macdonald’s Travis Mcgee Novels, Ranked (He ranked The Ripper #1)

NOVELS

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

MORE TRAVIS

• “Terminal Cases” (October 3, 1977, New York Magazine)
  Not really a short story (it only runs 2000 words), but a freewheeling rant between Meyer and McGee on, among other things, mortality, guns, junk food, over-population and television.
• Reading for Survival (1987) | Buy this book
  Sometimes referred to as “the 22nd McGee,” but this is no novel — it’s a monograph on the importance of reading, dressed up as yet another discussion between Meyer and McGee.

FILMS

• DARKER THAN AMBER | Buy this video | Buy the DVD
  (1970, National General)
  Based on the novel by John D. MacDonald
  Screenplay by Ed Waters
  Directed by Robert Clouse
  Starring Rod Taylor as TRAVIS McGEE
  and Theodore Bikel as Meyer
  Also starring Suzy Kendall, Oswaldo Calvo, Jane Russell

TELEVISION

• THE EMPTY COPPER SEA
  (aka “Travis McGee: The Empty Copper Sea”)
  (1983)
  Made-for-television film/pilot
  Based on The Empty Copper Sea by John D. MacDonald
  Screenplay by Sterling Silliphant
  Directed by Andrew V. McLaglin
  Starring Sam Elliot as TRAVIS McGEE
  Also starring Gene Evans, Katharine Ross, Vera Miles, Amy Madigan, Richard Farnsworth, Geoffrey Lewis

ALSO OF INTEREST

• “Green Gravy for the Blush” (March 1971, EQMM; Travis McGee parody by Jon Breen )
• The Official Travis McGee Quiz Book (1984; by John Brogan, intro by JDM) | Buy this book
• The World According to Travis McGee (2001, by R. Ackroyd) | Buy this book

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• The Trap of Solid Gold
  Long-time MacDonald fan Steve Scott (he assisted Walter and Jean Shine on their second edition of their definitive MacDonald bibliography) has created a truly great blog, featuring in-depth analysis of all all the novels and many of the short stories, plus a great selection of the author’s views on writing and other authors.
• The Travis McGee Series by John D. MacDonald
  Another fan site, and a lot of fun. As well as the book-by-book breakdown, and a collection of quotes, there’s also a selection of Boat Bum Cuisine, complete with recipes for such treats as Meyer’s Memorable Chili and McGee’s Special Martini.
• Sometimes I Wish I Lived on a Houseboat
  Tom Dooley’s personable, personal essay on why he wants to be Travis McGee (like, don’t we all?). It serves as a perfect intro to the beloved beach bum PI.  There’s an outline of the character and an enlightening passage from Free Fall in Crimson.
• McGee’s Little Black Book
  Let’s face it — the dude got around.
• Jean Pearson
  This site’s entry on Lori Stone’s detective hero, who may or may not be McGee’s long-lost lovechild. The allusions fall like the lonely silver rain….
• The Children of Travis McGee
  The literary descendants of our man Trav.
• Hey, This McGee guy sounds interesting. Anyone read him?
  An ad from the June 1964 issue of Cavalier.
• We Want Out: Darker Than Amber
  Review of the film by Nicholas Anez (March 2018, Cinema Retro)
• John D. Macdonald’s Travis Mcgee Novels, Ranked
  Peter Swanson revisits an iconic crime fiction series, in its entirety. (May 2022, CrimeReads)

TRIVIA

• According to Captain Morgan (of the now-defunct McGee Newsgroup), who looked through some of the prices in Yachting magazine back in 1988, a boat like the Busted Flush could easily run to half a million or more, depending on the amenities and adjusted for 1998 dollars. Anyone out there have any idea what it would be worth today?

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Bluefox808 for the multiple words to the wise. And Tom Malone for having sharper eyes than me. The first Plymouth’s on me, guys.