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EVERGLADES by Randy Wayne White

EVERGLADES

by Randy Wayne White

Pub Date: June 3rd, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-15058-7
Publisher: Putnam

Marine biologist Doc Ford is depressed. He’s convinced that he’s become a Jonah whose friends seeking his help are buying into his bad luck. At Dinkin’s Bay Marina, Doc’s neighbors are worried. Doc is drinking too much and putting on the pounds. Gone are those Spartan daily workouts that kept him buff. And—woe on woe—as Doc gains flab, so do his plot lines. His tenth adventure (Twelve Mile Limit, 2002, etc.) is kicked off by his childhood pal and ex-lover Sally Minster, who turns up unexpectedly at his stilt house with a colorless tale of a husband missing and presumed—well, is he really dead? Though Sally doesn’t seem over-invested in the answer, she inclines toward the theory that Geoff is living, breathing, and scamming his insurance company and whoever else he can. Among the others, she identifies a cult leader named Bhagwan Shiva, crooked as the stereotype allows, a sometime associate of her dear departed husband. Shiva, suffering temporary cash-flow problems, has a wicked real estate dodge planned for the Everglades, one that promises as much help to his coffers as harm to the environs. So off Doc goes with a triple objective: (l) get the skinny on the missing Geoff Minster, (2) stymie Shiva, and (3) recover his lost joie de vivre.

Doc will always have the Glades, of course: the hermit crabs, the cypress trees, the Native Americans, and other edifying people, causes, and digressions. But whatever happened to the deft storyteller who could once build such a head of narrative steam?