The Mangrove Coast

September 28, 1998
An awkward plot mars the latest entry (after North of Havana, 1997) in White's widely appealing Gulf coast of Florida series starring Doc Ford, marine biologist, former spook and reluctant detective. In the first chapter, Ford finds the body of Frank Calloway on the kitchen floor of the real estate baron's beach house. Eleven chapters later, readers return to Calloway's house to follow Ford, who decides that he'll look for the folder he'd come to see before he calls the police. The intervening chapters explain that Calloway had married--and later divorced--Gail Richardson, the widow of Ford's best friend, Bobby, who had been killed in Cambodia doing top-secret dirty work 20 years earlier. Gail and Bobby's daughter Amanda has asked Ford to find Gail, who is somewhere in South America with a man named Jackie Merlot. Ford learns that Merlot, a gross and depraved villain, has conned Gail into joining him in a rank business venture in the Canal Zone. Merlot is an arresting figure, but most of the action involving him happens so far offstage that his menace is largely wasted. And White's extended flashbacks are filled with pretentious ponderings about the human condition. From a writer whose work is usually marked by tight construction and wry dialogue, this fizzy tale is a misfire. Editor, Neil Nyren; agent Renee Wayne Golden.

The only thing that keeps this tale afloat is narrator Ron McLarty. When Doc Ford is asked by the daughter of a long dead Vietnam-era buddy to find her missing mother, he follows her from Florida to Colombia, then Panama. Little of consequence happens for most of the story--all the action comes on the last tape--and that's punctuated by an ending that leaves you ambivalent. In a steady voice McLarty does more than his share to keep you from signing off prematurely. You even forgive that his villain sounds more like a cartoon character than a heavy. McLarty demonstrates how a competent reader can save an otherwise unworthy offering. A.L.H. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine