Night Vision

Starred review from December 20, 2010
In White's intelligent, fast-paced 18th Doc Ford thriller (after Deep Shadow), Doc's hipster friend, Tomlinson, persuades Doc to help an extraordinary 13-year-old girl, Tula Choimha, recently arrived at a Florida trailer park from Guatemala. Tula, who speaks with God and whose patron saint is Joan of Arc, is determined to find her mother and brother, who came to America months earlier but have disappeared. People who get to know Tula believe she is special, blessed, even a saint—except for the sleazy, steroid-infused trailer park landlord, Harris Squires. Fearful that the discovery of some human remains inside an alligator carcass will implicate him in a crime witnessed by Tula, the paranoid Harris kidnaps Tula and takes off. Doc sets out to rescue Tula, but standing in his way is a menacing gangbanger, Victorino, and Harris's vicious girlfriend, Frankie. White balances the sordid criminal activities with plenty of intriguing wildlife lore. The bond that Tula forms with her captor adds poignancy.

White's eighteenth Doc Ford mystery involves Latino gangs, drugs, human trafficking, and violence--all coming up against a latter-day Joan of Arc. But then the quietly violent Doc Ford has to come to her rescue. George Guidall portrays Doc appropriately as a macho softie and adopts a bad-ass persona with perfect Latin accents to render the gangbangers. Guidall moves the action along while keeping the heroine above the fray. His pacing and timing are, as always, expertly matched to the author's narrative style. For followers of Doc Ford and lovers of the growing body of mysteries set in Florida. M.C. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine