"Travis McGee's still in Cedar
Key
That's what old John
MacDonald says"
-Jimmy Buffett (Incommunicado from Coconut
Telegraph)
Travis McGee lives aboard the Busted Flush, his 52 foot custom houseboat,
in
Slip F-18, Bahia Mar, Lauderdale. He is "purely McGee, that pale-eyed,
wire-haired girl-finder, that big shambling brown boat-bum who walks
beaches,
slays small fierce fish, busts minor icons, argues, smiles and disbelieves,
that
knuckly scar-tissued reject from structured society, who waits until
money gets
low, and then goes out and takes it from the taker, keeps half, and
gives the
rest back to the innocent."
When McGee's old war buddy Mike Gibson asks him to go help his little
sister
Nina, he heads to Manhattan. Nina's fiance, Howard Plummer, was killed
in
what appears to have been a simple mugging, but then Nina found ten
thousand
dollars hidden in her apartment. Since Howard worked for Charles McKewn
Armister IV, helping to manage his $60 million, Nina fears he may have
been
skimming money.
McGee starts looking around & becomes suspicious when he finds out
that Armister
had a nervous breakdown recently & has undergone drastic personality
changes
since then. Soon he uncovers a scam by Armister's attorney, Baynard
Mulligan,
and his personal secretary, Bonita Hersch, who have been siphoning
off money
from Armister's accounts. But just as he's getting close to breaking
the case,
McGee is slipped a mickey & wakes up in Toll Valley Hospital, the
same mental
institution where Armister was taken. There the malevolent Dr. Varn
subjects
him to a slew of psychoactive drugs & McGee is soon fighting to
maintain his
sanity & save his own life.
At some point, probably right after college, I read all 21 Travis McGee
books.
Like Mickey Spillane (Mike Hammer), Brett Halliday (Mike Shayne), Rex
Stout
(Nero Wolfe), etc., John D. MacDonald created a unique hero, set him
down within
the hard-boiled genre & cranked out million selling adventures.
The Travis
McGee books never rise above the genre, a la Chandler or Ross MacDonald,
but
they are an enjoyable artifact.
