Let me put in a good word for another MacDonald -- John D. , the incredibly prolific author of the Travis McGee series, now all but forgotten for some strange reason. McGee wasn't quite as hard-boiled as other PIs and was more contemporary in social sensitivity. As a colorful character, he was appropriately endowed with the most beautiful book titles ever in the detective genre, i.e.: The Deep Blue Good-By, The Quick Red Fox, Nightmare In Pink, A Purple Place For Dying, A Deadly Shade Of Gold, Bright Orange For The Shroud, Darker Than Amber, One Fearful Yellow Eye, Pale Grey For Guilt, The Girl In The Plain Brown Wrapper, Dress Her In Indigo, The Long Lavender Look, A Tan And Sandy Silence, The Scarlet Ruse, The Turquoise Lament, The Dreadful Lemon Sky, The Empty Copper Sea, The Green Ripper, Free Fall In Crimson, Cinnamon Skin, and The Lonely Silver Rain.
JDM in brief from one web source:
"... MacDonald [1916-1986] lived in Florida, where he set most of his tales. Like Raymond Chandler or Ross MacDonald he often he used fiction to comment such moral or social issues as ecological dangers, racism, political corruption, real estate scams, infidelity, and the drug culture. Before MacDonald created McGee [in 1964] he had already written over 40 books and several hundred short stories. His publisher pressured him to create a regular series character.... MacDonald planned to call his hero Dallas McGee, but the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas made him to change the name, he picked it from a US Air Force base.
"MacDonald used the first-person narrative, but he did not like its limitations. The author himself called the figure of McGee a 'tattered knight on a spavined steed.' Travis McGee is a Korean War veteran and former football player, a 200-pound drop-out from conventional society. McGee has sandy hair and ice-blue eyes, usually he wins his fistfights but he don't like brutality. He drives a 1936 Rolls Royce, and lives in Fort Lauderdale on a houseboat named 'The Busted Flush', after the poker hand that won it for him. His best friend and neighbour is the brilliant, chess-playing retired economist Meyer [whose own houseboat is the 'John Maynard Keynes']. - the relationship has much literary connections to Rex Stout's heroes Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe. ..." <http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jdmacd.htm>
Unlike Rex Stout, though, JDM could really write.
Carl