I first became enamored of Randy Wayne White after I mentioned to a client that I enjoyed reading Carl Hiassen.
“You ever read Randy Wayne White?”
“No,” I answered, but quickly made plans to delve into this writer’s work. I’m glad I did.
Randy Wayne White was working away as a flats fishing guide out of Sanibel, Florida when the Federal Government closed his little bay to motor boat traffic. It was devastating, but a guy like White, who tended for himself since he was a junior in high school, decided to take his love of writing seriously, and was able to publish his first novel, Sanibel Flats, and get a meager three-book deal.
White followed his early success with a string of 17 novels whose main character is Doctor Marion “Doc” Ford, a marine biologist who earns a tidy living supplying marine specimens to schools and laboratories around the globe. That’s his day job. At times, however, the little satellite phone hidden in a cubby in the floor of Ford’s stilts house rings, and that means it’s time for Doc Ford to go to work. Using the ruse of marine exploration and research, Ford will then travel to some remote location–South or Central America, Asia or the Caribbean. Eventually, a bad guy will be executed, necks will be broken or throats garroted and a hostage will be released. Ford’s life will inexplicably be changed, but it’s all business. White’s storytelling is introspective and analytical, like Ford, often with existential elements as well. The reader will occasionally wonder if Ford’s solitary existence is attractive or pitiful; whether White’s own life is mirrored in the novels is debatable.
My favorite–and I think the scariest–of White’s books, is Deep Shadow. An old friend of Ford’s has purchased a small parcel of land in central Florida, a parcel with a small, spring-fed lake. The lake, according to the friend, may well be the final resting place of one of Fulgencio Batista’s airplanes that had crashed upon the dictator’s flight from Cuba after the revolution. On board? Perhaps millions in gold coins. White, joined by his ever-present hippy/guru sidekick, Tomlinson, along with the old man and a young friend decide to take a dive in the lake. Once underwater, the shaky limestone collapses, trapping Tomlinson and the boy, while, on the surface, the crew is under siege by a pair of murderous prison escapees. What else could go wrong? Oh, did I mention the huge, speedy creature that inhabits the lake? Can Ford get him and his friends out of this one? Call it “the Old Man and the Lake Creature,” if you want.
White still lives in southwest Florida, and frequents the restaurant and rum bar that bears Doc Ford’s name. You may even see him in a corner booth working his laptop on another bestseller. Papa would approve.