320 pages
English language
Published May 31, 1995 by Fawcett.
The first book of the Travis McGee series. Touched by Cathy Kerr, a simple back-woods woman who has been robbed of everything but her dignity, Travis agrees to try to recover her plundered inheritance. But first he needs to find out how her father managed to hustle his way into big money while flight-crewing around the Far East during WWII. And how the stash got smuggled in, where it was hidden, and how to get it back from the predator who tracked it down. This quest takes Travis off on a prowl among the Texas gaudy noveau riche, and also to Manhattan where he gets a crash course in the business of smuggling and fencing gemstones. (description courtesy of The Travis McGee Series by John D. MacDonald, home.earthlink.net/~rufener)
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It was my first John D. MacDonald novel. This 'noir' detective novel is much of a psychological thriller (study) on abuse, than it is a simple detective tale. Having said that, I found The Deep Blue Good-By to be interesting, engaging, and well-written.
I’ve never read a John D. MacDonald book before and I’ve read a lot of good things about his Travis McGee novels, so I thought I might start at the beginning for this series. This is the first in what is now a 21 book series and the first time we meet Travis McGee, a self-described "salvage consultant", almost like a treasure hunter but instead he recovers the property of his clients for a fee; half. He is hired and has to go up against the pathologically evil antagonist Junior Allen, who may seem friendly but has a very sinister agenda.
For a hard-boiled style "salvage consultant" McGee seems to be very ordinary; I felt like all the guys liked him (except the antagonist) and all the girls wanted him. There wasn’t much depth in the character at all except in one scene where he was ready to torture someone …
I’ve never read a John D. MacDonald book before and I’ve read a lot of good things about his Travis McGee novels, so I thought I might start at the beginning for this series. This is the first in what is now a 21 book series and the first time we meet Travis McGee, a self-described "salvage consultant", almost like a treasure hunter but instead he recovers the property of his clients for a fee; half. He is hired and has to go up against the pathologically evil antagonist Junior Allen, who may seem friendly but has a very sinister agenda.
For a hard-boiled style "salvage consultant" McGee seems to be very ordinary; I felt like all the guys liked him (except the antagonist) and all the girls wanted him. There wasn’t much depth in the character at all except in one scene where he was ready to torture someone for information and I saw a glimpse of a sociopath in McGee. This just made me want to read a book with a sociopath hard-boiled detective, so if you have any recommendations let me know.
The story felt very predictable, it was more of a quick enjoyable story being told to me. I think, while this series might work well as filler reading to help recover from something heavy, there are much better books out there to read instead of this series. The sex and violence that was in this book was pretty intense for a book written in 1964 so I really don’t want to just write off the entire series because of predictability; so if you share a different opinion or can recommend me one of the Travis McGee books that could change my mind, please let me know.
