fadedroses- Fiction Book Series Authors (A-Z)

[boston bean]

171. MacDonald description

MacDonald is dead these last 25 years, and his books are probably out of print, but the 21 novels in the Travis McGee series remain among my all-time favorites.

McGee was a "salvage consultant," or a problem fixer. He lived the life of a beach bum on a houseboat ("The Busted Flush&quot , and took his retirement in installments, working when he needed money and retiring when he didn't. Usually through word of mouth, someone would approach him with a mystery, or a missing item, or a person in trouble. He would tenaciously go after the problem until he found a resolution.

I love his views of Florida, too. Again, from Wikipedia:

However, unlike other fictional detectives such as Raymond Chandler's jaded and world-weary Philip Marlowe, McGee clings to what is important to him: his senses of honor, obligation, and outrage. In a classic commentary in Bright Orange for the Shroud, McGee muses,

"Now, of course, having failed in every attempt to subdue the Glades by frontal attack, we are slowly killing it off by tapping the River of Grass. In the questionable name of progress, the state in its vast wisdom lets every two-bit developer divert the flow into drag-lined canals that give him 'waterfront' lots to sell. As far north as Corkscrew Swamp, virgin stands of ancient bald cypress are dying. All the area north of Copeland had been logged out, and will never come back. As the glades dry, the big fires come with increasing frequency. The ecology is changing with egret colonies dwindling, mullet getting scarce, mangrove dying of new diseases born of dryness."

This was in a paperback originally published in 1965 when the general public was still not conversant with the concept of environmentalism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_McGee