Dead Silence (Doc Ford) [Kindle Edition]

Randy Wayne White (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bestseller White's high-octane 16th thriller to feature Marion Doc Ford (after Black Widow) opens with a splash as Ford deep-sixes serial rapist Bern Heller into the ocean a mile off Sanibel Island, Fla. Killing Heller is a sidebar to Doc's primary mission: rescuing Will Chaser, a 14-year-old Indian boy from Oklahoma, from two Cuban psychopaths who in a bungled kidnapping attempt wound up with Will instead of their intended target, a U.S. senator. Will is the real star of the show—a tough, resourceful juvenile delinquent with rodeo skills and a propensity for rage that make him a pretty even match for the two demonic kidnappers, who are demanding valuable information found in the belongings of the now-deceased Fidel Castro. Despite some confusing backstory and an unnecessarily complicated plot—White drags in many of Doc's sidekicks from earlier books for not much apparent reason—the action roars along as Doc does what Doc does best: kick butt. Author tour. (Mar.)
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From Booklist

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. --Bill Ott

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 639 KB
• Publisher: Berkley (March 10, 2009)
• Sold by: Penguin Publishing
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001SK4K84
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #23,316 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

Randy Wayne White is the author of sixteen previous Doc Ford novels and four collections of nonfiction. He lives in an old house built on an Indian mound in Pineland, Florida.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not good, March 29, 2009

By 

Chris Doyal "Cooper's Dad" (Northern Michigan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dead Silence (Doc Ford) (Hardcover)

I own all Randy's books and am a HUGE fan. A new RWW book is like Christmas to me. This one is not good. It doesn't even read like a book of his. No humor whatsoever and it doesn't flow well for me. No fun characters we all know and love, no stilt house, no time on the water, no historical tidbits about Florida, etc, etc.

I'll continue to buy his books but lately, I've been disappointed more often than not.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, March 24, 2009

By 

doc peterson (Portland, Oregon USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dead Silence (Doc Ford) (Hardcover)

I have been a fan of Randy Wayne White since his non-fiction collection _Batfishing in the Rainforest_, and have been an avid reader of his Doc Ford series since its first novel _Sanibel Flats_ was published in the early 1990's. Therefore it is with a heavy heart that I give _Dead Silence_ 2 stars.

Long gone are the diatribes against developers, snow-birds, con-men and crooks that lured me to the series. The banter between trippy, hippie Tomlinson, a perennial favorite and the more serious, scientific Ford, once the highlight of the story now feels like a long married couple going through the motions. The last few books by White have fallen farther and farther afield, as Ford is pulled to more exotic locations in Latin America, the plot lines getting thinner and thinner, the action more fantastic (as in fantasy), the romantic laisons more unbelievable.

In _Dead Silence_, Ford interrupts the kidnapping of a United States Senator, who instead take a teen-ager visiting New York having won an essay contest. The story becomes increasingly bizzare, as threads of Tomlinson's wealthy family in the Hamptons intersect with Ford's dark past as a covert operator. The action is tense, the kidnapped boy buried alive as Ford is literally engaged in a race against time - if the ransom demands of the kidnappers are not met, the kidnapped boy will suffocate. As an added plot twist, White imagines a Cuba following the death of Castro, his secret files (and secret wealth collected over the last 40 years of his reign) are the bartering chips with which the Senator, Ford and the kidnappers haggle over. Add references to secret fraternities at Yale and you have a sense of just how far over the top (and how far astray from where the series began) White has come. To be fair, White's writing is taut - the action sequences are well written, and the struggle Ford has with getting in touch with his "right brain" is good - but this Doc Ford is a shadow of who he once was.

As an earlier reviewer remarked, perhaps Ford is a burnt-out hero. I won't go that far, as I continue to hope that the character and stories will be salvaged. I wonder if White's "Randy Striker" persona isn't bleeding into the writing of the Ford series - I hope not. While I will continue to read White's Doc Ford books, I can't recommend this one to any but the die-hard fan.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't bother, April 9, 2009

By 

Randy Fan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dead Silence (Doc Ford) (Hardcover)

I am a RWW fan, having read all the Doc Ford series but this one does not even resemble White's writing. It's almost like someone who flunked introductory mystery writing wrote it. It has multiple story lines, started but never developed or finished, nightmarish violence and too many undefined and unfinished characters. All the charm and uniqueness of the Islands, the characters of the Marina are missing. Tomlinson is unrecognizable. Randy should have quit while he was ahead.