[Travis McGee] has the hint of meanness and suggestion of illegality that made Sam Spade such a fascinatingly ambiguous character; he has [Phillip] Marlowe's sense of self-directed irony, his striking physical presence, and though more open to sensual experience, he shares in main his moral outlook; and finally he has Lew Archer's sensitivity and interest in others, a willingness to get involved with people, probably more involved than Archer himself.

Yet if McGee's character relates in part to an illustrious tradition, much of his personality as well as the basic ingredients of the novels must be traced to MacDonald's earlier suspense novels. (pp. 29-30)

The basic plot of a McGee adventure usually begins with the interaction of a girl (either an old friend or friend of a friend or kin to one) in trouble, and a large sum of money (missing, stolen or buried). Travis swallows the bait and sets off on his mission of rescue, either by land (in Miss Agnes, his faithful Rolls pick-up truck), or by sea (in the Busted Flush, his elegant houseboat that he won in a poker game from a Brazilian playboy). Usually he is accompanied by Meyer, the hairy and brainy economist-cum-pal also living in quasi-retirement on a houseboat (in Bahia Mar, Fort Lauderdale, Florida). Meyer rarely has a major role in the subsequent action (the major exception to this being The Long Lavender Look [1970] where his role is vital), serving instead as a useful convention, the idiosyncratic buddy, a bright Watson to McGee's earthy Holmes. McGee, like the Hemingway hero, is someone to whom things happen, and who also manages to make things happen. Once he has supplied sufficient pressure, the local scene explodes, and Travis then fits the pieces into the right slots. Usually the mystery-adventure involves a gang of con artists of one sort or another: smuggling, thievery, bamboozling, all types of chicanery. Rarely are we ever confronted with murder just for murder's sake: the profit motive is writ large in John D. MacDonald's world, as is only fitting of a novelist with an M.A. from the Harvard Business School.

Travis tracks down the gang through a tenacious process of elimination (usually literal); he somehow survives a grotesque assortment of killings and general mayhem, although his friends often aren't as lucky. The climax of the novels involves a ferocious mano-a-mano between Travis and the killer, invariably an upwardly mobile sadistic psychopath. In this struggle. Travis is almost killed, but recovers amazingly (lucky breaks seem to fall his way), gains the upper hand, relaxes (stupidly) and, then is attacked once again by his now totally crazed adversary, who gets a death grip on McGee, but never manages to consummate the act. Usually he ends up killing himself while trying to escape (thus saving Travis the responsibility for his death).

The closing scene usually finds Travis returning to the Busted Flush for some badly needed R & R with a playmate in tow (if she has survived the above carnage). If not, sometimes a playmate from an earlier tale will pop in to console McGee. Or at worst there is always the amusing comradery of the sympatico Meyer.

The success of this formula over the span of 16 books is due to more than simplicity. One obvious factor is the characterization of Travis McGee: a bundle of contradictions, brutal yet likable, fairly honest, with a Marlovian sense of humor and honor. Another ingredient is MacDonald's peculiar genius in creating with several swift sure strokes highly believable and interesting subsidiary characters, who take on a real life of their own and interreact convincingly with Travis, whether for him or against him…. MacDonald displays equal skill in creating fascinating vignettes of the towns and cities where these adventures take place (often sociological documents in their own right), and equally interesting details concerning whichever con is being played, from stamp collecting (The Scarlet Ruse, 1973) to the old badger game (Darker Than Amber, 1966) played for deadly stakes, to pornographic black-mailing in Hollywood (The Quick Red Fox). Finally there is the writer's Poeish knack for creating an atmosphere of elemental nightmarish terror, in generating the "smell of fear," as Chandler put it in discussing the Black Mask writers, a magazine for which MacDonald wrote several short stories.

This smell of fear relates directly to MacDonald's ability to create believable characters with whom we can identify as victims and equally convincing and frightening villains. Although Travis himself is as indestructible as most mythic heroes, we realize that his friends are less immortal. Often we meet them first after they have already been victimized, and are fully aware of how much they have suffered, and how cruel and destructive any further suffering would be. We are therefore almost as psychologically vulnerable as they are themselves to the idea of further pain, and we cringe when such violence recurs. In Bright Orange For the Shroud (1965), Vivian Watts is raped by the animalistic yet shrewd Boone Waxwell. She is ravaged not only sexually, but also psychically, a cruel abasement that leaves her no choice but suicide.

The McGee novels (and in fact almost everything written by MacDonald) are morality plays: Travis engaged in an endless struggle on behalf of defenseless victims, a force of Good against the multifarious Evil rampant in our harsh society. Though protean in their form the MacDonald villain is generally greedy, sexually twisted and amoral; in short, a sociopath, total madness only a flicker away. MacDonald's moral vision is conservative and manichean: McGee strives to preserve traditional values which he honors as an act of social good.

Yet in some of the recent novels one senses a certain ennui creeping into Travis' soul. He seems to be more remote with his friends, his women, even his enemies. In The Dreadful Lemon Sky, he turns down Carrie Milligan's offer of herself for no apparent reason except indifference, he remains strangely distant with Cindy Birdsong, in spite of himself; he can't make up his mind whether the clearly amoral Freddy Van Harn is really such a bad guy; and finally when his cop colleague, gutsy Captain Harry Max Scorf, has his head blown off by Hascomb, McGee uses Hascomb's moment of stunned "incredulous horror" to win the shootout, but then passes over Captain Harry's death without even a word of tribute.

Perhaps Travis and John D. both need a vacation, a time for McGee to savor his putative retirement, and a chance for MacDonald to work on a different type of novel for a while, to freshen his extraordinary narrative gifts. One remembers McGee's lament early in The Dreadful Lemon Sky, that his favorite Plymouth gin is no longer bottled in England: "… it isn't the same. It's still a pretty good gin, but it is not a superb, stingling dry, and lovely gin." (pp. 30-1)