About 30 years ago, I picked up a couple of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee (Mr. MacDonald was one of the most prolific American novelists of the twentieth century, and the books in the Travis McGee series all include a color in their titles and are therefore easily identified) novels at a yard sale. I read them and vowed to continue with the series, then never did. While looking for some beach reading this summer, I found a few more of the McGee books and hit on the idea to read the whole series in order of publication.

The Deep Blue Good-By is the first Travis McGee story, and it starts the series out with a bang. McGee is a man's man, but, somewhat surprisingly, he is also a bohemian's bohemian. John D. MacDonald's immense bibliography--he wrote, among other things,The Executioners, a creepy portrait of a sociopath that was made into the movie Cape Fear, twice--would imply hack work. Happily, it turns out that, as I remembered, Mr. MacDonald was a superlative plotter, creator of characters, and prose stylist.

When John D. MacDonald died in late 1986, I heard National Public Radio (NPR) report on his death. They interviewed Elmore Leonard, no slouch himself as as a writer, and almost as prolific as John D. MacDonald. Mr. Leonard, who started his writing career as an advertising copywriter, said that he taught himself to write fiction by reading John D. MacDonald's novels repeatedly.

In establishing the Travis McGee character in The Deep Blue Good-By, Mr. MacDonald reached some heights in characterization and motivation, but also indulged, in my opinion at least, in some purple prose, particularly in his exposition of McGee's knightly impulses. That's my highly personal judgement, but I hope it will also explain my skimping with four stars on a book that by almost every measure deserves five.

I was a little disappointed by this. It was a good hard-boiled yarn, with a good hard-boiled narrator - things I'm usually a sucker for, and I did tear through the book.

But it was a little misogynistic, even in this damsels-in-distress genre; all the women either needed saving or else were beyond saving. A touch of the Houllebecqs in his female characterisation, I thought. On top of that, the book would have had a lot happier ending if the hero had just thought to tie up the bad guy, which just didn't ring true. I enjoyed the reading of it though, and would give MacDonald another chance.
( )

This was my first journey into the world of Travis McGee. Boy, howdy, what a fun and fine trip! John D MacDonald’s writing is right up there with the best. Not only is this a great story, but MacDonald’s use of the English language is something akin to Chet Baker’s work with a trumpet. Pure magic.
Here’s McGee describing himself:
“...Travis McGee, that big brown loose-jointed boat bum, that pale-eyed, wire-haired girl-seeker, that slayer of small savage fish, that beach-walker, gin-drinker, quip-maker, peace-seeker, iconoclast, disbeliever, argufier, that knuckly, scar-tissued reject form a structured society.”

“I tried to look disarming. I am pretty good at that. I have one of those useful faces. Tanned American. Bright eyes and white teeth shining amid a broad brown reliable bony visage. The proper folk-hero crinkle at the corners of the eyes, and the bashful appealing smile, where needed. I have been told that when I have been aroused in violent directions I can look like something from an unused corner of hell, but I wouldn’t know about that. My mirror consistently reflects that folksy image of the young project engineer who flung the bridge across the river in spite of overwhelming odds, up to and including the poisoned arrow in his heroic shoulder.”

Descriptions of other characters:

“I could see that she was elderly by Chook’s standards. Perhaps twenty-six or -seven. A brown-eyed blonde, with the helpless mournful eyes of a basset hound. She was a little weathered around the eyes. In the lounge lights I saw that the basic black had given her a lot of good use. Her hands looked a little rough. Under the slightly bouffant skirt of the black dress were those unmistakable dancer’s legs, curved and trim and sinewy.”

“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.”

“She was a tall and slender woman, possibly in her early thirties. Her skin had the extraordinary fineness of grain, and the translucence you see in small children and fashion models. In her fine long hands, delicacy of wrists, floating texture of dark hair, and in the mobility of the long narrow sensitive structuring of her face there was the look of something almost too well made, too highly bred, too finely drawn for all the natural crudities of human existence.”

“A few years ago she would have been breathtakingly ripe, and even now, in night light, with drinks and laughter, there would be all the illusions of freshness and youth and desirability. But in this cruelty of sunlight, in this, her twentieth year, she was a record of everything she had let them do to her. Too many trips to too many storerooms had worn the bloom away. The freshness had been romped out, in sweat and excess. The body reflects the casual abrasions of the spirit, so that now she could slump in her meaty indifference, as immunized to tenderness as a whore at a clinic.”

And, my favorite line:
“She was styled for abundant lactation, and her uniform blouse was not.”

MacDonald certainly knew how to turn a phrase--a brilliant artist using words to paint pictures that jump from the page. There’s something quote-worthy on just about every page of THE DEEP BLUE GOOD-BY.

“The wide world is full of likable people who get kicked in the stomach regularly. They’re disaster-prone. Something goes wrong. The sky starts falling on their heads. And you can’t reverse the process.”

“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.”

“People have their acquired armor, made up of gestures and expressions and defensive chatter.”

“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.”

A special thanks goes out to my great friend, Bobby, who gave me this book. ( )

Too much sex to make it an enjoyable read. Otherwise it’d be a fun private eye novel. The author seems fixated on the female form. ( )

Not as good as I remember when I was sneaking the McGee novels off my parents' bookshelves. Fairly standard hard-boiled PI stuff, but it sets everything up for subsequent books. I should probably visit a couple more of the series before making a final verdict. ( )