DUKE on JDM

"MacDonald, himself, has managed to escape some of the pressures of society that he so dislikes by becoming a highly-successful free-lance writer. His fictional character, Travis McGee has certainly chosen a more hazardous way to make a living. Besides being beaten and shot at by assorted thugs and criminals, he's been fed LSD by a group of unscrupulous scientists and kidnapped by Neo-Nazis in a Florida retirement colony. He is also pursued by over-sexed heiresses, career girls and movie stars whose advances he may very well turn down, unless he feels the necessary rapport with them. McGee is equally immune to bribery in the bedroom and to offers of fabulous sums of money. He is an idealist of the old school, reminding the reader of Hammett's Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler's Phillip [sic] Marlowe. The popularity of the series may be a reaction on the part of readers against the Mike Hammer type hero, who never was troubled by ethics, and who never turned down anything in a skirt. It may also show that the reader is growing a little tired of the larger-than-life hero such as James Bond, with whom it is almost impossible to identify."

--from "Author of the Issue: John D. MacDonald," an uncredited two-page piece on JDM found among the pictorials, articles ("Men Who Offer Their Wives") and barely-readable fiction of the June 1967 issue of Duke. The article contains little of value and more than a few errors (the Mike Hammer claim above is factually incorrect) but is worth bringing to your attention, if for no other reason than an excuse to display the magazine's cover.