The Deep Blue Good-By (Travis McGee Mysteries)

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Here he learns of a man who made what seems like an illegal fortune while completing military service India. For reasons I won’t go into, his surviving descendants never got to see any of this as they were conned by a man who has bad written all over him. Travis isn’t busy right now but neither is he particularly inclined to disturb his cosy routine of not doing very much. But hey, a payday is a payday so soon he’s engaged in the chase. It’s not going to be easy as there are few clues to the whereabouts of the conman or even the nature or scale of the potential bounty. But Travis is a rangy charmer with a nose for a lead and he’s soon on the scent. Just when producer Leonardo DiCaprio and the team at Fox thought that the adaptation of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novel T he Deep Blue Good-By might finally reach screens after years floating in development limbo, along comes a depth charge to once more scupper the progress. Thanks to Christian Bale tearing a knee ligament, the plan to shoot this summer has been scrapped{ John D. MacDonald was born in Sharon, Pa, and educated at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Syracuse and Harvard, where he took an MBA in 1939. During WW2, he rose to the rank of Colonel, and while serving in the Army and in the Far East, sent a short story to his wife for sale, successfully. He served in the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations. After the war, he decided to try writing for a year, to see if he could make a living. Over 500 short stories and 70 novels resulted, including 21 Travis McGee novels.

However, unlike other fictional detectives such as Raymond Chandler's jaded and world-weary Philip Marlowe, McGee clings to what is important to him: his senses of honor, obligation, and outrage. In a classic commentary in Bright Orange for the Shroud, McGee muses, 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. I had that fractional part of consciousness left which gave me a remote and unimportant view of reality. The world was a television set at the other end of a dark auditorium, with blurred sound and a fringe area picture.” MacDonald's books ought to be part of a writer's education on how to write. He's incredible with his poetic descriptions, how beautifully he paints a scene and creates a person, using words without going into cliché. And no, his words are unique enough that I don't recall reading them in anyone else's work. So no excuses that he was able to create the clichés later writers have to avoid!When MacDonald created the character, he was to be called Dallas McGee, after the city, but after the Kennedy assassination 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 so he named his character Travis. [4] Like Spielberg's shark in Jaws, we feel the presence of Junior without actually seeing him. This tension is intense and superb, and grows throughout the first 2/3 of the book. We know there's a battle to come, and its outcome is uncertain. Excellent. 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. Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

Still, he parks his nihilistic world-view long enough to trap Junior with the help of a newly-confident Lois Atkinson and some help from a counterfeit jeweller. 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. Regardless, this is a book, and I'm sure the others in the series are very similar, where the reader becomes totally invested in the characters to the point where you find yourself saying, "I can't believe you did that!, " or "Oh, my heavens!" At least, for me, I couldn't help it. 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.The story is what it is, a not entirely good guy is hired to collect something not entirely legal in whatever way he sees fit. Along the way he encounters many broads in very little clothing, described with great affection. There's a bad guy and some not so good guys, a showdown and some interesting detection all padded out with discussions on the state of society and actions designed to make Travis seem like a much friendlier yet conflicted guy than he initially appears. 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.” Set solely in the living room of one apartment, it is a talky drawing-room piece that goes nowhere, although it does go round and round. I for one didn't see a lot to rave about in it. Article from Elle magazine 2017) How Playboy's Unsung Female Photographer Broke into the Boys' Club and Took Them All for a Ride He was in a gigantic circular bed, with a pink canopy over it. In all the luxuriant femininity of that big bedroom, George looked shrunken and misplaced, like a dead worm in a birthday cake.”