Captain McGee. Private cruises. Personalized therapy. And a little twinge of pain when the plane took off, pain for McGee, because she was too close to what-might-have-been. If there’s no pain and no loss, it’s only recreational and we can leave it to the minks. People have to be valued.

In 1963, Fawcett Publications (which began, as I’ve told you before, in Robbinsdale, Minn., the town where I live, but had by this time been in New York state for decades) faced a business crisis. Fawcett was one of the pioneers in the field of “paperback originals” – novels published specifically for the paperback market, generally sensational and lowbrow in character. Their most popular writer was Richard S. Prather, author of a series of racy hard-boileds starring a randy private eye named Shell Scott. Prather had received an irresistible offer from Pocket Books, and was jumping over to their house. Fawcett desperately needed a new series detective.

In a moment of sanity (fairly rare in publishers) they turned to one of their most dependable and talented writers, John D. MacDonald. “Give us a series hero,” they said.

MacDonald’s response was a character he planned to call Dallas McGee. Dallas would be a lanky beach bum, living on a houseboat in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Instead of a private eye, he would call himself a “salvage specialist.” When people were robbed or cheated out of valuable possessions or large sums of money, they could go to McGee. He would try to retrieve them, and if he succeeded he got to keep half.

Fawcett green-lighted the project, and McDonald quickly churned out several short novels starring Dallas McGee to launch the series rapidly. They were nearly ready to release the first one when disaster struck – inconvenience for Fawcett, but tragedy for the nation. Pres. John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22. Everyone understood that it would be very poor taste to offer a series hero named Dallas in the present atmosphere. They consulted with the author and settled on a new name – Travis McGee. The pages were all re-set, and the first book, The Deep Blue Goodbye, appeared in early 1964.

Not long ago, a sale price showed up for the e-book version of Nightmare in Pink, the second offering in the series. I figured, “Why not? Let’s see how it holds up.”

I was amazed how much I enjoyed it.

Travis McGee, it is explained, is a veteran of the Korean War. One day during the war, his buddy Mike Gibson was substituting for McGee while he was on leave. Mike came under attack, and ended up crippled and blinded. Today he lives in a VA hospital. McGee visits him from time to time. Now he’s facing life-threatening surgery. He has a favor to ask.

His sister Nina, he says, is a commercial artist in Manhattan. She’s gotten engaged to a businessman, an investment broker. Would McGee check the guy out, see if he’s kosher?

McGee can’t say no. But by the time he’s arrived, the issue seems moot. Nina’s fiancé is dead, victim of an apparent mugging. Only the evidence doesn’t add up. When McGee starts poking around his life and his associations, it looks as if he suspected some crooked goings-on. Could he have been murdered to keep him quiet?

As McGee slips into a relationship with Nina (no surprise there), he also steps on some trip wires, alerting people who are very powerful and very ruthless, who will not hesitate to destroy both him and his new girl.

I had a strange sensation as I read Nightmare in Pink. A clarity, a cleanness I don’t experience with most contemporary novels, even ones with better sexual morals. It was a feeling something like stepping out of a smoke-filled room into the fresh outdoor air.

What Nightmare in Pink was not polluted with was Wokeness. Travis McGee came before men felt obligated to be apologetic about being men. He’s proud to be a man, comfortable in his masculinity. He likes women and they like him. I read books like these to live vicariously, and Travis McGee offers a mainline shot of pure, vicarious testosterone.

I’ve often written about my pleasure in hard-boiled narration. McGee does hard-boiled narration, but in his own way. Instead of the jewel-like aphorisms you find in Raymond Chandler, MacDonald’s McGee offers thoughtful meditations. He makes observations of the world, of humanity, and right and wrong. I don’t always agree with him, but there’s more genuine thought going on here than you’d expect in a straight-to-paperback potboiler from Fawcett.

In short, I had a blast with Nightmare in Pink, and recommend the whole series (though I consider the e-books a little overpriced).

[The book has a new introduction by Lee Child which does little to advance MacDonald criticism, in my opinion. His best argument to persuade modern people to read the books seems to be that MacDonald was ecologically aware. That’s true, but misleading. Current environmentalism tends to the Luddite side, and MacDonald was no Luddite. He had a business degree, and sympathetic businessmen are not rare in his books.]