Showing results by author "Randy Wayne White" in All Categories

Marine biologist and former secret operative Doc Ford is lazily poling his skiff along Southwest Florida's flat copper sea in search of sea anemones when he runs into the body of the most hated man on Sanibel Island: Marvin Rios. And when the Island's simplest and sweetest resident is arrested for the murder, Doc heads straight into the heart of the sunshine state's dark side - to save his friend from being framed, and to save Sanibel Island from a rising tide of land-grab schemes, blood money, and violence.

Marine Biologist Doc Ford has a new mission for Sharks Inc.: visit Sanibel Island’s remote Bone Field to find a wild orange tree that's survived a disease destroying Florida’s citrus. There, the members of Sharks Incorporated find oranges unlike any they’ve ever seen but can’t find the tree Doc needs. Worse, the area is protected by a massive saltwater crocodile.

Marine biologist and former government agent Doc Ford is sure he's beyond the point of being surprised by his longtime pal Tomlinson's madcap tales of his misspent youth. But he's stunned anew when avowed bachelor Tomlinson reveals that as a younger man strapped for cash, he'd unwittingly fathered multiple children via for-profit sperm bank donations. Thanks to genealogy websites, Tomlinson's now-grown offspring have tracked him down, seeking answers about their roots...but Doc quickly grows suspicious that one of them might be planning something far more nefarious.

A 20-year-old unsolved murder from Florida's pot-hauling days gets Hannah Smith's attention, but so does a more immediate problem. A private museum devoted solely to the state's earliest settlers and pioneers has been announced, and many of Hannah's friends and neighbors in Sulfur Wells are being pressured to make contributions.

In a pawnshop alleyway, James Hawker finds a body mutilated beyond recognition. She was beautiful once, he knows, but life in this hardened Los Angeles neighborhood took its toll. Starnsdale was once a working-class community, but now it is a battlefield ravaged by warring gangs who kill without thinking and care nothing for the ordinary citizens crushed beneath their feet. The toughest gang is called the Panthers - and Hawker has come to hunt them down.

A lot is going on in the trailer park known as Little Guadalajara, inhabited principally by illegal laborers. The park manager is the hired gun of a financial syndicate that wants to develop the property, and he's prepared to do whatever it takes - but he can't figure out what to do about the teenage girl, the one the laborers believe has some sort of gift.

Doc Ford saves a former President of the United States from assassination—and regrets it. Months ago, Kal Wilson's wife was killed in a plane crash. President Wilson is sure it was no accident—and he wants revenge. He needs Doc Ford to spring him loose from the watchful eye of the Secret Service, keep him alive, then get him home. Ford has just been picked for presidential duty—whether he likes it or not.

A Russian diplomat disappears while Doc is tagging great white sharks in South Africa, and members of a criminal brotherhood, Bratva, don’t think it’s a coincidence. They track the biologist to Dinkin’s Bay Marina on the west coast of Florida, where Brotherhood mercenaries have already deployed, prepared to pillage and kill in the wake of an approaching hurricane.

The world’s shark population is in trouble for a sad, simple reason: shark fin soup. And although it’s illegal, poachers have been targeting Florida’s biannual migration of blacktip sharks. Marine biologist Doc Ford needs some assistance protecting the sharks and enlists the help of three kids - Luke, Maribel, and Sabina. Luke is brand-new to Florida from the Midwest; sisters Maribel and Sabina have only recently arrived from Cuba - and all three feel like fish out of water. It’s going to take some convincing for them to work as a team.

Randy Wayne White is acclaimed as "wildly inventive" (The San Diego Union-Tribune), "a wonderful writer" (Paul Theroux), "a fine storyteller" (Peter Matthiessen), and "the rightful heir to John D. MacDonald" (The Tampa Tribune-Times). Now he delivers a wicked thriller that sends government agent-turned-marine biologist Doc Ford into dangerous new waters, as a Florida fishing dispute escalates into a deadly war that reaches across the ocean...

Marine biologist Doc Ford invites Maribel, Luke, and Sabina to a remote island in the Bahamas where lionfish, a beautiful and venomous inhabitant of the South Pacific that has invaded Florida and the Caribbean, are not just upsetting the balance of nature by damaging the coral reefs - their sting has put several people in the hospital. What Doc and Captain Hannah Smith don’t mention is that the island is riddled with limestone caves, once home to a band of pirates, and stories of Spanish gold have lured outlaw treasure hunters to the area.

Marine biologist Doc Ford has been known to help his friends out of jams occasionally, but he's never faced a situation like this. His old pal Carl Fitzpatrick has been chasing sunken wrecks most of his life, but now he's run afoul of the Florida Division of Historical Resources. Its director, Leonard Nickelby, despises amateur archaeologists, which is bad enough, but now he and his young "assistant" have disappeared - along with Fitzpatrick's impounded cache of rare Spanish coins and the list of uncharted wreck sites Fitz spent decades putting together.

A fishing guide and part-time investigator, Hannah Smith is a tall, strong Florida woman descended from many generations of the same. But the problem before her now is much older even than that. Five hundred years ago, Spanish conquistadors planted the first orange seeds in Florida, but now the whole industry is in trouble. The trees are dying at the root, weakened by infestation and genetic manipulation, and the only solution might be somehow, somewhere, to find samples of the original root stock.

When a Crow Indian acquaintance of Tomlinson’s asks him to help recover relics stolen from his tribe, Doc Ford is happy to tag along - but neither Doc nor Tomlinson realize what they’ve let themselves in for. Their search takes them to the part of Central Florida known as Bone Valley, famous primarily for two things: A ruthless subculture of black-marketers who trade in illegal artifacts and fossils, and a multibillion-dollar phosphate industry whose strip mines compromise the very ground they walk on.

Still haunted by his suspected involvement in a plot against Castro, Ford ventures to Cuba - where he finds himself entangled in a web of murder, revenge, and assassination.

A man holds 12 children hostage at gunpoint. Across the street, James Hawker dangles from a skyscraper, watching the terrorist through a sniper's scope. Hawker has a shot, and he wants to take it, but the police brass say no. By the time he gets permission, it will be far too late. The terrorist opens fire, killing two of the children before Hawker can take him out. When the smoke clears, the madman is dead, and Hawker's career is toast. No longer a cop, he's about to become America's deadliest defender.

Doc Ford’s old friend, General Juan Garcia, has gone into the lucrative business of smuggling Cuban baseball players into the US. He is also feasting on profits made by buying historical treasures for pennies on the dollar. He prefers what dealers call HPC items - high-profile collectibles - but when he manages to obtain a collection of letters written by Fidel Castro between 1960-62 to a secret girlfriend, it’s not a matter of money anymore. Garcia has stumbled way out of his depth.

Randy Wayne White's ninth Doc Ford novel starts out as a fun excursion for four divers off the Florida coast. Two days later only one is found alive - naked atop a light tower in the Gulf of Mexico. What happened during those 48 hours? Doc Ford thinks he's prepared for the truth. He isn't.

Fifteen years ago, a teenage girl found an ancient gold medallion on a small island off the Florida gulf coast. Soon she was having nightmares and later was found hanging from a tree. Although the death was ruled a suicide, the girl's mother, Della, is now sure there was foul play. Her trailer has been vandalized, and her daughter's coffin raided.

The house is historic, some say haunted. It is also slated to be razed and replaced by condos, unless Hannah Smith can do something about it. She's been hired by a wealthy Palm Beach widow to prove that the house's seller didn't disclose everything he knew about the place when he unloaded it, including its role in a bloody Civil War skirmish (in which two of Hannah's own distant relations had had a part), and the suicides - or were they murders? - of two previous owners.