The Mangrove Coast

Readers who still yearn for Travis McGee and wish the Busted Flush wasn’t in permanent dry dock should hook up with Randy Wayne White’s Doc Ford–a Travis McGee for The ’90s. (The Orlando Sentinel). Randy Wayne White continues to produce the kind of novel that makes The Denver Post say, We’ll always drop anything to read a new Randy Wayne White novel, and be glad we did. In The Mangrove Coast, the daughter of a dead war buddy calls Ford in distress. If you’re ever really in trouble, his friend had written her, Ford’s the one you can trust. And trouble is what she’s got. Her mother’s disappeared in Mexico without a trace, in the company of an unsavory companion, and her money’s gone, too. Doc agrees to help, and finds himself in Baja, on the trail of a man more genuinely evil than any he has ever encountered. There’s more to it than that, though–a third man whose shadowy presence brings death in its wake. For Doc, the mystery–and the danger–only deepens. In fact, solving the puzzle may turn out to be the most perilous thing of all. Filled with crackling prose and atmosphere, and some of the best characters in contemporary suspense, The Mangrove Coast is a triumph of inventive storytelling.