Although I am not a big crime novel fan, I read a lot of Patricia Cornwell  and P.D. James during my early years in Hungary when I read what I could get my hands on. A lot of this came from my friend Martin who picked up his books at airports. In short, it is not really my genre. However, when American artist (living in Hungary) Stephen Zeigfinger saw a few John D. Macdonald books I had recently acquired at the shop, he highly recommended them.  I had never heard of MacDonald, but I am very happy I took his recommendation. Perhaps today’s readers would recognize as the author of Cape Fear, but it was a huge surprise for me to see he also wrote two of my favorite childhood movies, “The Girl, the Goldwatch and Everything,” and “The Girl, the Goldwatch and Dynamite.” Ok, so I thought Pam Dawber (Mork & Mindy) was hot. Almost as much a surprise as when I discovered that The Planet of the Apes was penned by French author Pierre Boulle, the same man who wrote The Bridge Over the River Kwai.The Macdonald books I like, are the ones starring “salvage consultant” (read: fixer) Travis McGee (originally going to be called Dallas McGee, until the Kennedy assasination). McGee lives aboard the Busted Flush, a houseboat he won in a poker game, docked at Slip F-18 in Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. McGee is “retired” until a friend, or a friend of a friend needs help, and he needs money. He takes on a salvage job if by other means the lost item or person is otherwise deemed unrecoverable. If he is successful, he gets 50%. The 21 books in the Travis McGee series begin with The Deep Blue Goodbye (1964) and end with The Lonely Silver Rain (1981).  I have read about half of them now, and just enjoyed reading The Scarlet Ruse. In fact, I have enjoyed all of them so far, with the exception of Free Fall in Crimson, which I thought was very weak. The Green Ripper won the National Book Award in 1980.

Another favorite author, Carl Hiaasen, acknowledges the influence of MacDonald on his own work. Both men set their action in Florida, but whereas MacDonald’s characters are from the hard-bitten crime genre, Hiaasen’s are more quirky. What both authors share is being witness to the environmental destruction of Florida by big business, factories, real estate developers and the government, and condemning it in their books.  You may recognize Striptease as the basis of the Demi Moore film – skip the film, read the book. It is the book that got me hooked on Hiaasen. Some of his books include:
•  Tourist Season (1986)
•  Double Whammy (1987)
•  Skin Tight (1989)
•  Native Tongue (1991)
•  Strip Tease (1993) 
•  Stormy Weather (1995)
•  Lucky You (1997)
•  Sick Puppy (2000)
•  Basket Case (2002)
•  Skinny Dip (2004)

All were good reads, with the exception of the much weaker Sick Puppy and Basket Case. So throw on some Jimmy Buffett music and dig into some John D. MacDonald and Carl Hiaasen. In fact, Buffett himself writes Florida-based crime novels. Changes in lattitude, changes in attitude...