The Sons of John MacDonald

Why I write

I grew up in Mitchell, SD. I was always reading. One day I bought a new paperback novel in a cigar store for thirty-five cents. The Deep Blue Goodbye by John D. MacDonald. As I stood on the sidewalk holding the book, I had an epiphany. John D. wasn’t writing these books for his health! He did it for a living. Thus the seed was planted. It took me thirty years to learn how to write a novel, but that’s because I’m a slow learner.

Back to John D. Back to Travis McGee, more significantly. Deep Blue was the first of the series, introducing us to the loose-limbed beach bum who lived on a houseboat, the “Busted Flush.” He won it in a card game. McGee was a salvage consultant. If you’d been robbed and exhausted all legal means of redress, McGee would get it back, for half. He worked his way through a long line of supple women. Some came to bad ends. Some were dead when he met them. Told in the first person, the books enthralled me and I couldn’t wait for the next one. MacDonald had a gift for putting his finger on the pulse of evil like no writer before or since. His villains were monstrous.

You may not know the name, but you know his novel Cape Fear, which has been made into a movie twice, the second starring Robert DiNiro in perhaps his most evil role. It also featured Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck, who starred in the original. There have been several attempts to bring Travis to the big screen. The first, Darker Than Amber, stars Aussie Rod Taylor as McGee, and Theodore Bikel as his brainy friend Meyer. It’s worth watching if only for William Smith’s turn as Terry, one of those monstrous villains MacDonald was so good at creating. The fight between McGee and Terry is epic and brutal, and secured for director Robert Clouse the job of directing Enter the Dragon. Taylor is not a bad McGee. It’s much better than it ought to be, but it’s not the movieMacDonald fans want.

Next came Travis McGee starring Sam Elliott as McGee. Better, but no cigar. Based on The Empty Copper Sea, it’s must viewing for MacDonald fans. Christian Bale was set to star in The Deep Blue Goodbye, but he broke his leg. McGee fans will never forgive him.

Biker is my stab at creating a series character in McGee’s mode. Josh Pratt is a reformed motorcycle hoodlum who went to prison, found God, and came out determined to turn his life around. That was the very first thing I posted on Reddit, and I was instantly banned for life. What do you think was the cause? Josh’s religion surfaces sporadically, when he attends church and is reminded how awful he had been. I hit my stride with the second novel, Sons of Privilege, about the drowning deaths of college athletes after a night of drinking, a smiley face scrawled on a nearby wall. These crimes were real. Search for the “smiley face killings.” The FBI sought the killer or killers for years. The murders happened all over the country.

Josh falls for Fig Newton, the sister of a murdered athelete, searching for answers. His search leads him to the ruins of an old commune in an abandoned farm. Most of Josh’s adventures take place in Wisconsin, but they take him all over the world. Sons also contains a novel within a novel, a tough black private eye in the vein of Donald Goines or Chester Himes.

In Not Fade Away, an aging flower child hires Josh to prove that the late, great Wes Magnum wrote “Marissa” for her and gave her the rights.

“It was one of those songs that burrow into the public consciousness, part of our collective memory. Like “Born to Run” or “Hotel California.”

“Almost impossible is my impression about what Josh Pratt thought his chances were of verifying rights to a song written by a dead rock star, who supposedly gave those rights to Josh’s client “back in the day”. I thought he was right to question himself about taking on such an impossible task too, but he did it anyway. The guy is a die-hard. Literally. Plenty of twists and turns in this one, as well as someone finally asking Josh why he yanked the fuel injection system off of his Road King and replaced it with a carburetor. I actually laughed, because that’s probably what I should have done years ago. If you ever had a Harley with their early fuel injection, you’d understand. What I did instead was trade mine in on a carbureted model, and was pleased that I did. I’ve since moved on to a newer fuel injected bike (that’s all they make now) and it’s great, so no worries.” —Bill Ellingson

Last year I released Kahn, my ninth Josh Pratt novel. “When MMA fighter Gena Kropenski goes missing, along with a rare Siberian tiger, animal rights group The Wild Animal Initiative hires him to find the beast and bring it back unharmed.

The trail leads Pratt on a wild goose chase throughout the Upper Midwest and sees him cross paths with animal lovers and gangsters, friends and foes, all leading to sleazy Tiger Sanctuary owner Fabian Fitch, who will stop at nothing to ensure his cash cow ‘zoo’ stays open–despite the State of Wisconsin’s crackdown.

With more twists and turns than a Colorado mountain road, KHAN is Josh Pratt at his finest, proving once again that Mike Baron is the master of the action scene, the titan of telling tales, and the undisputed King of the Urban Jungle.”

I’m not the only son of John D. Randy Wayne White’s Doc Ford series, set in Florida is in that mode. Chuck Logan’s Broker series are set in Minneapolis. There are many others. We are all writing because of John D.