This may be before most of your times, but have any of you read any of the Travis McGee series?

I abhor detective stories and most forms of abductive novels, since most information is with held until the end, and then it's all "elementary," but really very little info was divulged and we get to see how clever the protagonist is.

With that said, the McGee series is a very well written saga of an aging beach bum who solves mysteries. John D. MacDonald began writing them in the sixties, and the social commentary is pretty great. The books are more about people than they are about the mysteries. Somehow, the books sort of remind me of Fraggle Rocker. That is, if Fraggle was an ex-soldier beach bum murder solver living on a houseboat 30 years ago.

http://home.earthlink.net/~rufener/homepage.html

I heard that Magnum was inspired from the books. Is this true?

I don't know.

What an amazing name...Not as good as Travis McGoo, though...


***starts singing***

"What's new?
Mr. Mcgoo!"

Have read the entire series. I was a Travis McGee fanatic starting in the early 70s. Was in the army at the time, and a buddy lent me his copy of The Deep Blue Good-Bye (1964), the first book in the series. Became hooked. McGee is cool. I mean come on - the guy lives on a house boat in Bahia Mar, a Ft. Lauderdale marina. The Busted Flush, a boat he won in a poker game, appropriately enough by bluffing a win with a busted flush. His buddy in the series, the roley poley intellectual Meyers, is supposedly the personification of author John McDonald. One thing to note about the story lines. McGee is not a P.I. He is a self-described "salvager", the guy you come to last when you've exhausted all legal means to recover your losses after you've been screwed in some con game. He takes half of what he recovers as his fee, and as we discover, he is very good at what he does because he is fairly adept at the con game himself. But there is something special about this series. McDonald delves deep into the hearts and souls of the characters, both the protagonist character MGee, as well as the various victims he rescues and their antagonists in each novel.

Magnum P.I was not based on this series. According to Tom Selleck, much of its idea, and subsequent style, was taken more from the Rockford Files, James Garner's irreverant portrayal of a P.I. The Magnum show was originally pegged to be a dramatic P.I. series, but Selleck fought the studios hard, despite the fact he was a relatively unknown actor, to make the Magnum character more of a bungling, light-hearted, less-than-perfect soul, and it probably is what made the show a long-running success.

Incidently they did one of the McGee books into a movie about 15-20 years ago, with Sam Elliot cast as McGee, which was a good choice I thought, but it was impossible for a movie to delve into the depths of the characters as McDonald does in the books, so I thought the movie was rather flat.

I've read almost the entire series, but what I enjoyed more than the plots was McDonald's philosophy. McGee's social commentary was great, or Meyers' ability to get anyone to tell him anything.

McGee was definitely cool. Do you happen to remember the name of the movie?

I couldn't remember, as it was pretty dull, so I looked it up. The Empty Copper Sea. Seems it was a pilot for a possible tv series. I'm glad it didn't go over. McGee just wouldn't have come across as a tv character. Found this site on McGee.
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/travis.html

I liked these books. Cynical, like good writing is, in these times.