Amazon.com Review
Of all the Travis McGee wannabes who've appeared on the mystery scene since the death of John D. MacDonald, Randy Wayne White's Doc Ford, the marine biologist with an intentionally vague history of military espionage, comes closest to hitting the mark. In this seventh outing in a popular series that's never quite broken into bestsellerdom, Ford is finagled away from his beloved fish and his stilt house off Florida's Gulf Coast to investigate the grave robbing of a long-dead adolescent girl who had a remarkable gift for finding archaeological artifacts of a long-gone civilization of Calusa Indians. The centuries-old gold medallion that may have been buried with Dorothy Copeland has mysterious powers--at least, that's what a big Florida developer whose son is being groomed for high political office seems to believe. By the time Doc Ford starts investigating the incident, along with his oddly gifted friend Tomlinson (a druggie with a past as violent and mysterious as his own), more lives are at stake, including Doc's.
Ten Thousand Islands is based on a true story of multiple tragedies associated with the 1969 discovery of the medallion at the novel's center. But the complicated tale of mayhem and serial murder White weaves of it is all his own. Doc Ford is an increasingly interesting character whose love life takes up as many pages as the plot, but the community of Dinkin's Bay, with its fascinating and well-drawn minor characters, is as great a part of White's series as the denizens of Travis McGee's Fort Lauderdale marina were of MacDonald's. --Jane Adams
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Of all the writers currently exploiting the Florida mayhem boom, only White can claim to have created a series hero, marine biologist Marion "Doc" Ford, to match Hemingway's memorable outdoorsmen and John D. MacDonald's much-missed Travis McGee. Some of the Ford books have been unfocused, but White's seventh (after 1998's The Mangrove Coast) is one of the strongest, rich with not only evocative images ("I spooked a school of redfish that angled away as a herd, pushing an acre of waking water") but also with an unusually deep cast of characters. Ford himself is in top form, quickly convincing readers that he cares as much about his real job (capturing snook for a lab working to improve the breed) as he does about solving a mysteryDin this case, why the grave of a 15-year-old girl who had an uncanny ability to find things has been desecrated. Somebody is after a 400-year-old gold medallion that she unearthed, a relic of the Calusa Indians. Besides Ford's scene-stealing druggy sidekick, Tomlinson, there are some very interesting female characters: the dead girl herself, with whom Ford turns out to have a strange connection; her gutsy mother, a tough waitress working to keep her daughter's memory alive and unsullied; a young archeologist and an older local woman who take Ford's mind off his former lover. Even the obvious villains, a wealthy and politically powerful father-and-son team, are saved from being clich s by some original touches. But the real star is the seascape of Florida, something that FordDand WhiteDknow intimately. National tour. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
