Plus, he always made enough in a few days’ work (all expenses paid) to last for months. Not to mention the houseboat he won in a poker game, or the Rolls he got (IIRC) dirt cheap.
Right, he was not just bumming it, but living a comfortable retired life… in chunks. Earn $10k, live on it for six months, go earn another chunk…
I don’t remember that he got the Rolls cheap, just that he found it on a used-car lot. Probably cheap, though. The later conversion probably cost a purty penny or two.
I just started* The Dreadful Lemon Sky.*
“After the drink it was time for juice and coffee…By then real dawn had arrived…I had vowed never to let myself get sloppy again…no tobacco ever again, easy on the booze…”
Before dawn? Jeez! 
… get laid regularly, always with more-than-willing hot babes …
Damn, I should live so well! :mad:
I remember one of these books (AB can probably tell us which one, or maybe there was more than one) where he waxed philosophical to himself about sex, something about all this angst and emotional turmoil all over a little skin friction. That’s from memory probably 40 years old, that’s how long ago I read these. I liked them a lot and was sad to get to the end of the last one. But I’ve never been tempted to pick up one again either.
Roddy
I became such a fan of Travis McGee that after reading most of the series I started looking up and finding earlier novels written by MacDonald. I found out then he had written Cape Fear.
It’s somewhat sobering to realize that he is, by any measure, at least 82 years old.
There is The Lonely Silver Rain.
The Wages of Sin. 
More than one. At least three soliloquies that I can think of, about how sad and silly and empty it all is, and the tendency of the male to fall into such depressed reveries afterwards. More passing comments to the effect.
Slip F-18 stands empty. He’s out there somewhere, on a another adventure.
Yeah, beating up some guy from his wheelchair because the guy stole some applesauce.
Was there truly a “Black for the (whatever)” narrated by Meyer?
I always liked Meyer, the hairy economist. I envisioned him being played by somebody like Ron Liebman, the guy who was the union organizer in Norma Rae.
But hey, he gets half the applesauce, right?
The literary estate has said quite firmly that there are no unpublished McGee novels, not even unfinished ones. Black Border for McGee was something of a joke by MacDonald, invoked to get a shock out of fans and his publisher.
I always envisioned it as being a straight-up McGee adventure until McGee buys it in a flash of white light… then picking up in exactly the same style as Meyer completes the story and the adventure and the series.
“…I look over at slip F-18 and try not to see the young couple in their cabin cruiser that now fill it. It’s not the same. It never again will be.”
Amateur Barbarian pretty much nailed it about McGee, with the exception of him being a borderline drunk. He liked a certain variety of gin (blech), but he was certainly no regular hard drinker.
The worst that could be said about Travis and women was that being around him increased one’s risk of sudden death through no direct fault of his own. In fact, being his buddy wasn’t good luck either, as Meyer could have told you.
McGee was way ahead of his time as far as attitudes toward women (despite his successes, his outlook was in many ways the antithesis of the Playboy Philosophy), minorities (i.e. blacks and Hispanics) and the environment, even if his views look a bit quaint in 2014.
I’m sorry to inform you that McGee died about 20 years ago of metastatic melanoma (acquired through years of cultivating a deep sunbaked Florida tan). He did however solve a fascinating mystery before kicking the bucket (look for my novel, to be published soon).
I always thought John Rhys-Davies.
Hairy.
How much did you have to pay the estate, Jack?
Hell, my girlfriend found mine, and all is well.
Oh, his women get killed or blown off, so nome of them were around long enough to notice that ie grew!
I think he turned into Clinton Tyree
According to Wikipedia, MacDonald died at the age of 70, on December 28, 1986, at St. Mary’s Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from complications of an earlier heart bypass operation–not metastatic melanoma.
I had the impression that almost none of his stuff showed up on movies/TV but I was wrong:
Thinking about The Lonely Silver Rain. McDonald and Travis really went out on top, didn’t they? Really no diminution in the quality of the storytelling, no downshifting into desultory or ludicrous plots, Travis was still vibrant, still curious, still questing, and his daughter showed up! A true loss for crime novel fans, no telling how much more great, compelling McGee there would have been.
Apropos of nothing, I am an avid rereader, always have been, and I prolly have read each Travis 10 times or more. I still don’t tire of them, just need to take some time off between rereads.
Lastly, McDonald was superb at villainry, particularly the charismatic sociopath variety. Maybe no one better.
Agreed.
Randy Wayne White is as good at creating really dark villains, I think. Probably better. Coincidentally, a lot of people consider Doc Ford to be a modern day Travis McGee.