It is a sunny afternoon aboard the Busted Flush, the 52-foot houseboat Travis McGee won in a card game.
McGee, beach-bum savant, has been studying four freckles on the golden skin of the sleek young woman sunning next to him. And now he is telling his best friend, Meyer, that he has put all his money in a trust for the 17-year-old girl he has just learned is his daughter, and he needs to find work soon.
Meyer puts his hand on McGee’s arm, beams at him and says, “Welcome to the world.”
And that’s the last the world heard from either of them.
In 1986, the year after this scene was published at the close of John D. MacDonald’s 21st Travis McGee novel, “The Lonely Silver Rain,” MacDonald died.
But McGee’s popularity lives on.
He’s not just any old thinking reader’s private detective who can hold his own against the thugs and wax philosophical –about everything from standing in lines to the economics of drug wars.
He’s in what he calls the “salvage business,” meaning that he looks for items lost or otherwise missing, and charges half the value of anything he recovers.
Then he lives off the proceeds until he runs out of money. “Retirement comes when you are too old to enjoy it completely,” he says, “so I take some of mine whenever I can.”
The books continue to sell so well that Fawcett is reissuing them in paperback, and simultaneously Random House is reissuing each of its three-hour abridgments, beginning with the first novel, “The Deep Blue Good-By” ($17), read by Darren McGavin. The hardback was originally published in 1964.
For those who want the full effect, however–and listeners wouldn’t want to settle for less–Books on Tape (800-626-3333) has recorded each of the 21 novels unabridged, for a total of 171 hours of listening.
Most of the titles–all of which have a color in the name, supposedly so fans can remember more easily which they’ve read–are 6 to 9 hours in their recorded version and rent for $14.50 to $16.50. They sell for $26 to $48.
Michael Prichard reads each of them, and for me, his voice has become synonymous forever with McGee’s. It has that detached, introspective quality, yet not without compassion and caring.
– Fast forward: Margaret Thatcher has followed her book-and-audio combo, “The Downing Street Years,” with “The Path To Power” (abridged to 6 hours, $25), which she reads for Harper. She reviews her political history from her teenage years doing volunteer campaigning to her time as leader of the opposition, before she became prime minister of Britain.
Royal Shakespeare actress Judy Parfitt reads an abridgment of Cosette (6 hours, $25), for Harper. The sequel to “Les Miserables,” written by Laura Kalpakian, continues the story, told in Victor Hugo’s classic novel, of the child waif and adopted daughter of Jean Valjean.
