Description
White's latest Doc Ford suspense thriller has well-drawn characters, including a grizzled ex-wrestler, two Cuban kidnappers, a teenage boy, a snobby Hamptons millionaire and Ford's hippie colleague. The scenes in which Ford painstakingly pieces together clues and provides backstory tend to drag a bit, but the action sequences are gripping and nail-bitingly suspenseful. Mystery fans are well advised to snatch this one up.
Retirement didn’t sit well with Doc Ford, White’s marine biologist and black-ops agent. Doc’s back in the game now but choosing his own projects, including a spot of vigilante settling up with the serial rapist who killed one of the fishing guides from Dinkin’s Bay Marina, Sanibel Island, Doc’s beloved home. With the local cops on his tail, Doc hops a plane for New York, there to rendezvous with a fetching U.S. senator who finds the biologist’s horned-rim glasses and broad shoulders a very appealing combination. Naturally, things happen. Ford witnesses the senator’s attempted kidnapping and manages to keep her out of harm’s way, but another person riding in the limo, a 14-year-old Native American boy, is snatched instead. It’s all part of a scheme by some rogue Cubans to recover a cache of Castro’s private papers. Soon enough the boy has been buried alive (with an air vent providing a rapidly diminishing air supply), and Ford and best-buddy Tomlinson, who hails from Long Island, are on the trail. The action, typical for White, is relentless, and the tension builds agonizingly (nothing like burying somebody alive to ratchet up the suspense). But the real interest here is the glimpse White provides of Tomlinson’s background (rich kid with seriously bent kinfolk). This may not be the tightest or most entertaining novel in the series, but longtime fans—of whom there are many—have been wanting to hear more of hippie-dippy Tomlinson’s backstory for years, and they’ll be overjoyed to get their wish.
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