Thinking of Travis McGee

Yes, that is me and, yes, I am drinking a martini. Indeed, on the porch of the Columns Hotel right on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, six blocks from my house. While the Columns is one of the best outdoor bars in town, with endless passing tourists providing entertainment, I was drinking martinis there for another reason.

I had just finished re-reading The Deep Blue Goodbye by John D. MacDonald and it brought back wonderful memories. Back when he was writing, John had been categorized as a “paperback writer” to use a Beatles term, and he hated it.

As a writer of paperbacks, his books were never reviewed. They were never in the front of the bookstore. They never made best seller lists. John was frustrated and committed to change.

He lobbied his publisher to allow his books to appear first in hard cover format and then, a year later, in the more familiar paperback form. That meant the publisher would have to take a risk. Would the hard-cover books sell? If not, his income would be down.

At the time, I was running The Detective Book Club and we would buy the book club rights to hard cover books and publish our own editions for our members. The rights fee we would pay the original publisher often meant the difference between success and failure for the book. If we took it, everyone made money.

I caught wind of the dilemma John was facing and, through his publisher, reached out to him. We would be willing to guarantee that we would take each of his upcoming Travis McGee novels and would, in fact, pay a sizeable sum up front, in advance, to secure them.

There was only one catch. John had no idea who I was and was only vaguely familiar with The Detective Book Club. In short, I had to travel to Florida to convince John this was a good deal for all parties.

While I was eager to go, John had some strict rules. I was to come to his condo on Longboat Key. I had to come during the week, and arrive precisely at 12:30. Why?

Because he wrote Monday-Friday and ended his writing at 12:30 each day. At that point his housekeeper would serve him his first martini. John had no interest in disrupting his writing routine to discuss some business deal with some young publisher from New York.

I agreed to his terms, traveled to Florida, arrived on time and settled into the martini routine. As I recall, they were excellent. They were also plural.

We hit it off, and made the deal. But this time, I added a wrinkle. I wanted to come back, once a year, every year and discuss the new book he was planning to write. Of course, more than that, I just wanted to hang out with this engaging and fascinating man.

John agreed to my request and, for several years, until I moved on, martinis on his balcony on Longboat Key in February were part of our annual routines. While John has passed on, every now and then I find myself, martini in hand, thinking of those times. Happily.