17 thoughts on “Cure for the blues”

  1. I recommend ” A Tan and Sandy Silence,” as well as “The Lonely Silver Rain.”

    I always liked the Hairy Economist.

  2. Thank the Good Lord for ‘ole John D.
    Years ago, 10 I believe, I began collecting his Travis series in first editions. Still haven’t finished.
    Sorry to hear about the job. You’ll make a great writer.

  3. Been reading Travis for at least the last 30 years, if not more. Was in Florida a few years ago and stopped at Bahia Mar. Slip F-18 has a plaque commemorating the place and it mentions Travis is out on the Busted Flush but is expected back any time.

  4. Good choice of authors.
    I’ve been a fan starting when JD was still writing them.

    Much as I like the Travis McGee series, you might also want to check into “The Girl, The Gold Watch, and Everything” and “Write for further details” for gut-shaking laughter. His two excursions into science fiction, “Ballroom of the Skies” and “Wine of the Dreamers” are thought-provoking too.

    Good luck on the job situation.
    I just can’t imagine a world that doesn’t have a “Mr. Dawg” out there on the back roads of the Texas Panhandle.

    Old Fud

  5. Allus liked ol Trav til he made some nonsensical statments about guns. Like how he occasionally needed a gun in his line of work, but ordinary folks probably shouldn’t be allowed.
    And how he liked the double action trigger in his Browning High Power.

    As Fud says, his brief foray into my other field, SF, was interesting; two different explanations about how Earth never seemed to learn the lessons of history and progress. I never could make Wine of the Dreamers click, but the last chapter of Ballroom of the Skies – where Earth was kept backward and tough to provide leaders – paid for all. Everybody in the Galactic Fleet was quaking in his boots: The Man From Earth was taking command.

  6. I’ll definitely have to give that a try. Life has been less than perfect these days and an escape sure sounds nice.

    Thank you for the tips.

  8. That’s the cure for a lot of things. Haven’t reread any JD in a long time – might be time to break them out. My choice this weekend was Martha Grimes’ Richard Jury series – found a few I’d missed.

  10. Spider Robinson was also a great fan of this series, and made a comment to this effect in “Stardance”. They have to stick the corpse of a dead astronaut/dancer in their storage area until the next supply ship comes to take it back to Earth.

    Managing to work in the old Jack Benny routine of Fibber McGee’s closet (where everything pours out whenever it’s opened, they refer to it as “Travis McGee’s closet”, a nice reference to the number of bodies he’s always leaving behind.

    I can’t recommend starting in the middle of the series…you get a much better appreciation of them if read in the order written.

  12. JimW beat me to it in the first two paragraphs of his comment above. Another point that rankled was when McDonald wrote something about how he couldn’t understand why anyone would want to be a police officer and go armed among his neighbors. Oh, well, McD was still a heckuva writer.

    Probably my favorite of the NON-McGee novels was One Monday We Killed Them All

    JPG

  13. I would suggest not reading the Travis books in a condensed time frame.
    Made that mistake back in ’75 during an extended vacation in Ft Lauderdale. Found the local library had most of them. Read a small pile over a weekend. Heavy melancholy, tending toward depression was the result.
    Although, recovering from the impact of a telephone handpiece (on a 20ft cord) to the back of my head may have had some influence on that!

  14. Deadly Shade of Gold, Darker than Amber, and Green Ripper- I kinda identified with Green Ripper, as I was in that part of the country during the late 70’s and saw a bunch of those fruitcakes and their survivalist/cult/eco-freak actions… Also lost a fairly nice girlfriend to one of the groups. LD, if you don’t run for Sheriff, you would actually have time to write 🙂 You DO owe us a few more stories…

  15. McDonald’s Travis McGee, Robert Parker’s Spenser and everything ever written by Robert Heinlein are responsible for my personal outlook on philosophy and my view of the world. I’ve read all of the Travis McGee novels at least three times each. Good stuff.

  16. If you cross “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” with “Pale Gray For Guilt” leavened with “Stranger In A Strange Land” and a dash of “The Girl, The Gold Watch and Everything” AND a mix of John Maynard Keynes and Malthus you just might understand why I like the Law Dawg and Masaad Ayoob.

    And Dawg? Why don’t YOU put your money where you heart is and run?

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