Dead Silence [Audio CD]

Randy Wayne White (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2008

Unabridged CDs, 9 CDs, 11 hours Imagine the worst that can happen. Then imagine again. The stunning new Doc Ford novel by the New York Times-bestselling author.

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Penguin Audio; Unabridged edition (2008)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00248VMJY
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,115,078 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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.