White Novel Another Doc Ford Page-Turner
Written by: Bruce DeSilva
Publicized in:
SFGate.com
Publication Date: March 12, 2007
Maybe that's why
reading his Doc Ford crime novels always feels like listening to an old salt
tell a whopper.
Ford, introduced
14 books ago in 'Sanibel Flats' (1990), is a retired intelligence agency hit man
trying to make a living as a marine biologist. But try as he might, he can never
seem to leave his past behind. In each novel, this improbable character
reluctantly gets mixed up in an unlikely and perilous
adventure.
In 'Hunter's
Moon,' White has outdone himself the plot so far-fetched that it is suitable
only for readers with a highly evolved ability to suspend
disbelief.
The wife of a
former American president is dead, killed when her plane crashed during a
humanitarian flight to deliver medical supplies to Central
America. The ex-president
is sure it was not an accident and knows who was responsible. He wants revenge,
and he's in a hurry to get it because he's dying of
leukemia.
Naturally, he
turns to Doc Ford.
Ford helps the
ex-president shake his Secret Service detail and sneak out of the country. With
Ford's best buddy, an aging hippie named Tomlinson, lending a hand, they sail
and fly to their destination in a restive area of the isthmus of
Panama.
There, the story
gets wilder as White introduces us to a rebel leader, obnoxious American TV news
reporters and Islamic terrorists while pumping up the action with a series of
explosions and gun battles.
The villain Ford
and the ex-president are hunting is a serial killer whose face is disfigured
with burns. The character is recycled from an earlier novel in which he tried to
kill Ford's son, whose mother is the widow of a Latin drug lord. But that's
another story.
Sure, it's all
wildly unlikely, although no more so than TV's popular '24,' but if you can
swallow the premise, 'Hunter's Moon' is another rip-snorting Doc Ford page
turner. That's why White is such a hot writer these days, his last Doc Ford
novel, 'Dark Light,' reaching #17 on The New York Times best seller
list.
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