Of the non-series MacDonald pulp books, try ONE MONDAY WE
KILLED THEM ALL, which has to be one of the coolest
hardboiled titles ever. (My vote for the coolest McGee title:
THE GREEN RIPPER) The back-cover copy on my Fawcett Gold
Medal edition reads: "He was a man who could slap one woman
to death because she loved him, and hum a love song to
another while he raped her." Kinda like the type of guy McGee
would go after in the later books.
Commercially speaking, there has never been a smarter
creation than Travis McGee. He is the embodiment of male
wish-fulfillment. No nine-to-five job, lives by his own set
of rules, resides on a houseboat, drinks but is not a drunk,
tall, handsome, good with his fists but not a bully, etc. All
of the women McGee sleeps with are built like centerfolds,
and, more importantly, most of them conveniently kick before
that bothersome issue of commitment comes to the forefront
(one mystery store in New York actually has an annual Travis
McGee Always the Bridesmaid Never the Bride Award in honor of
the latest murdered female companion to a male series
character). So McGee is the man we--okay, most of us--would
like to see when we look in the mirror. And, yeah, I love the
books. I even named my old dog, Travis, after McGee. And that
dog was a bitch.
One more thing: the McGee books are early 60s timepieces (the
hero's Hefner-like, paternal attitude towards women) in the
same way that Spillane's books represent a certain kind of
attitude (paranoid, racist, homophobic) from the 50s. Think
of them on one hand as social records, and try not to judge
them from the perspective of our more "enlightened" present.
When a modern writer tries to approximate that attitude in a
period book (for the sake of his own street-cred or to
maintain a rep of cool) is when the issue becomes more
complicated and problematic.
That ought to stir up the bees.
Pelecanos
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