Hunter's Moon

January 15, 2007
The 14th Doc Ford Florida thriller (after 2006's Dark Light
) from bestseller White requires more suspension of disbelief than most readers may be willing to provide. Marine biologist Ford, a shadowy figure with multiple links to the intelligence community, gets an unusual commission from Kal Wilson, a former one-term president who recently lost his wife in a mysterious plane crash. Wilson, who has a terminal illness, asks Ford's help in slipping his protective detail so that the politician can search for those he believes responsible for his wife's death. Implausibly, the psychotic serial killer who's Ford's bête noir, Praxcedes Lourdes, appears to have been involved in the attack on the former first lady, giving the covert op a personal incentive to assist Wilson. The action sequences, especially those involving Wilson, are less than convincing, and the climax is particularly far-fetched.

March 1, 2007
White's last entry in his Doc Ford series (" Dark Light, " was a quasi-historical novel in which his hero, marine biologist and special-ops agent Ford, unraveled a mystery with roots in World War II. This time, though, it's back to the present, as Ford tangles with his nemesis from " Tampa Burn" (2004), the psychotic pyromaniac Lourdes. There's more than mano a mano going on here, though, as Lourdes is working with a group of Islamic terrorists who have a global agenda. And Ford has a new partner, too: Kal Wilson, a Clintonesque former president of the U.S., now stricken with a fatal illness, who needs Ford's help with a few clandestine items on his to-do-before-I-die list. It's a bit of an outlandish premise, to be sure, but White makes it work, drawing the former prexy into Ford's world as easily and believably as if he were just another hanger-on at Dinkins Bay Marina. There's not much kicking back, Margaritaville-style, on the agenda, however, as the lethal mix of pyro psychos, wacko right-wing Americans, and global terrorists keeps Ford on high-adrenaline full throttle from beginning to end. Yes, we'd like a bit more of the reflective character interplay that usually peppers the action in this series, but White does pure action as well as anybody in the genre, so why not just enjoy the ride?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)