Travis resides in a housebarge called Busted Flush moored in Ft. Lauderdale that he won in an epic poker game (hence the name) but really lives off the grid so to speak. Technically unemployed, Travis takes 'jobs' to earn his keep, but not any type of job: "Where you kidding me that time we talked... about what you do for a living?" John D. MacDonald was the great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.”—Stephen King 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. Christian Bale Eyed to Play Travis McGee in 'The Deep Blue Good-By' ". thewrap.com. July 15, 2014 . Retrieved July 17, 2014. 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.”

I was a bit miffed because I saw a casting notice which asked for cars of all types. No mention of ‘1960’s period’ cars. The onset of the sixties is a Freudian era… Women are instrumental in everything… They are hot stuff… They are victims… Who am I to keep from putting my shoulder to the wheel? Why am I not thinking about an estate and how to protect it? Gad, woman, I could be writing a million dollars a year in life insurance. I should be pulling a big oar in the flagship of life.” (Is this really Travis or, I believe more likely, MacDonald talking about himself?) If titles alone were enough, The Deep Blue Good-by would be one of my favorite all-time novels. MacDonald does a intoxicating job evoking a hard-boiled and sun-drenched nihilism here, establishing a resourceful entrepreneur in Travis McGee who seems more content to keep his own company than run one, scraping his boat and scraping by in a world he barely notes worth saving. John F. Kennedy isn't mentioned specifically, but the year of publication hints that the president's assassination and direction the country was headed in had a lot to do with McGee's skepticism of America, traveling as far south as he could without needing to speak Spanish. Even when that means believing women are nothing more than objects of his sliding scale of deserved affection and taking advantage of those too weak or too kind or too grateful to say no.

Frail and broken, Lois can barely get out of bed when Travis finds her, let alone keep herself alive. But Travis turns into Mother McGee, giving Lois new life as he looks for the ruthless man who steals women’s spirits and livelihoods. But he can’t guess how violent his quest is soon to become. He’ll learn the hard way that there must be casualties in this game of cat and mouse. One day I was having a conversation with my good friend and fellow GR member, Cathy DuPont, and she kept talking about this guy called Trav. The way she spoke about him led me to believe that he was a very good friend of hers, a Floridian neighbour, and an all-round wonderful guy. It seemed that they'd known each other for some time. Cathy was clearly smitten with him. Rattigan wrote some fine, incisive plays and some that were less so. This play was originally (prior to performance and publication) about his obsessive secret relationship with Kenny Morgan, and their breakup. But McGee sees his real job as being a sort of hardboiled ‘knight-errant’, usually aiding a nubile post-WWII damsel-in-distress. The pattern for the series is set in The Deep Blue Good-by when Cathy asks Travis McGee for help recovering a dubiously-earned fortune that her dead father left hidden. McGee takes the case, and it leads to a smarmy but persuasive lowlife named Junior Allen. And in his effort to learn more about Allen, McGee meets his latest victim, Lois Atkinson. Junior Allen had wormed his way into controlling Lois’ life and money, and she was reduced to a nearly catatonic state by the time McGee came along. In addition to being a brute and a treasure-hunting rival for Travis, Lois reveals that Allen is also a serial rapist. Travis proceeds with his plan to recover Cathy’s fortune and ensure that Junior Allen meets justice.

James Mangold Boarding Travis McGee Tale 'The Deep Blue Good-By' ". deadline.com. March 4, 2014 . Retrieved July 17, 2014.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. But when the bad guy encounters the women, he hooks them on sex, presumably the wrong kind, addictive and corrupting. Some of what we today might call abusive, but mostly the sex: 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. He's a man of strong moral principles, full of arrogance and conceit, a man who dislikes the America of the sixties yet happily takes advantage of it. He'll take a beating and keep on coming. He's a tough guy with a cynical edge. I can see why he and John D. MacDonald were so highly thought of as he is the perfect update on the hard-boiled noir hero of the previous generation and his influence can be felt even today, Dave Robiceaux springs to mind most easily as benefitting from his creators affection for Travis McGee. Travis McGee's main character is fantastic. An honest and solitary seeker of more or less legal business who lives on a boat won in a poker game and is always surrounded by women. A lovely guy.