TEN THOUSAND ISLANDS

Key Largo bartender Della Copeland is another of that seemingly inexhaustible supply of strong-yet-vulnerable females who can’t survive without the help of Dr. Marion Ford. Fifteen years after her daughter Dorothy dug up a mysterious gold medallion on Marco Island and started to have even more mysterious visions before she was found hanging from a tree, Della’s home has been ransacked by somebody looking for the medallion—or whatever other talismans he can lay his hands on. Is the would-be thief Ivan Bauerstock, the magnate who owns half of Marco Island? Teddy Bauerstock, the dead-eyed charmer his old man’s grooming for the state senate and points north? Bauerstock contractor Frank Rossi, whose own son Tony bids fair to follow in his father’s slimy footsteps? A savior-for-hire who seems to worship at the shrine of Travis McGee can’t go wrong assuming everybody on the horizon is out to make trouble for the ladies, and standing ready to repel the monstrous males one by one. And that's just what Doc Ford, who’d have you believe he’d rather be supplying marine specimens to the Mote Marine Laboratory than mixing it up with the bad guys, does—with results more stimulating to the adrenal glands than the cerebral cortex.

Memo to more sensitive guys: the suggestion that Dorothy may be Doc’s repeatedly reincarnated astral soulmate, tragically dead less than 20 short years before they were to meet, should help you decide whether Doc’s seventh adventure (The Mangrove Coast, 1998, etc.) is for you.