All Books By Randy Wayne White

by Travis McGee
(Fort Lauderdale, Florida)

My name is Travis McGee. My creator was John D. MacDonald.

Old John D. died in 1986, and I floundered around without a plot to live in for many years. At last, after many years, a new creative genius arrived on the literary scene and created my soul mate, Doc Ford. This creative author is Randy Wayne White, who allegedly lives on Pine Island in Southwest Florida.

His neighbors south of Pine Island on Sanibel have named a popular restaurant there after Doc, and Randy Wayne White owns it and is frequently seen there.

Doc Ford doesn't live on his houseboat as I did, but he does live in a boat house at Dinkins Pass marina somewhere on Florida's west coast. Sounds like Sanibel or Captiva or maybe Pine Island or Cayo Costa or Cabbage Key or any number of Southwest Florida places becalmed in the mullet latitudes (check Al Burt, his titles, his memories).

Doc is a marine biologist trying to earn an honest living providing specimens to labs around the world. His former mysterious life as either a CIA agent or Navy Seal or maybe both keeps landing him in one adventure after another.

Pine Island is sparsely populated. St. James City is on the south end of the island. It is kind of like the illigitimate child of a Harley dude and a crabber or commercial fisherman.

One restaurant down there nestled on one of the many canals that lace the city happily serves bikers and boaters, side by side.

Way up on the north end of the island miles away is Bokeelia, a small community of Florida Cracker houses sprinkled among the sand dunes and bayous.

Pine Island is northwest of Ft. Myers, and one must travel through the burgeoning community of Cape Coral to get there.

Matlacha Sound, a shallow body of water where the tidal flows run fast, divides Pine Island from Cape Coral. This fisherman's land is where Randy Wayne White spent much of his career as a fishing guide before finding his muse and creating my buddy, Doc Ford.

There is a little community called Pineland on this island. Nothing more than a post office and a couple of houses and a very friendly peacock or peahen, I'm not sure which.

When one visits the post office, the peafowl trots over to say hello.