Dark Light (Doc Ford Series #13) by Randy Wayne White

From the Publisher

I magine hurricane winds over the Sahara Desert, preceded by a cavalry of tornadoes. Imagine dunes flattened, then resculpted. Then imagine all that at the bottom of the sea.

A Category Four hurricane has swept the west coast of Florida, creating havoc, changing lives, and reshaping the ocean bottom. Well-known reefs and wrecks have been covered up-and new ones have emerged. The old woman who visits Doc Ford's lab late one night has a haunting story, of a loved one lost while rendezvousing with a German submarine off the coast of Florida sixty years earlier, of her belief that he was being blackmailed and that the storm has given her a second chance to prove his innocence by uncovering the wreck of his boat-and the truth-if only Ford would look for it. Intrigued, Ford agrees, and sets in motion a chain of events that will change his life forever. For there are other things in that wreck as well, and other men want those things, men willing to commit terrible acts to get them. And the woman herself-the woman is not what she seems. . . .

Rich with passion and vivid, pungent prose, and some of the best characters found in suspense fiction today, Dark Light is a thriller of uncommon intensity.

Publishers Weekly

The 13th installment of bestseller White's aging but still solid series featuring Doc Ford (after 2005's Dead of Night) finds the retired CIA operative picking up in the aftermath of a hurricane that's ravaged the Florida coast. Hired to sift through the old wreck of a pleasure craft, the Dark Light, that's been spotted after the huge storm, Ford and his salvage team discover items inside the boat that stir deadly vengeance-Nazi artifacts. Ford runs into trouble immediately from Bern Heller, a nearby marina owner who claims his company has rights to the wreck site and doesn't hesitate employing violence to get his way. At issue, Ford soon discovers, is more than just old Lugers, war medals and a few gold bars. The real prize lies in the ownership of thousands of acres of Florida beachfront property. While the novel peaks in a typical burst of satisfying action, the plot takes too long to get underway and lacks the overall crispness of the author's best work. 80,000 first printing; author tour. (Mar. 16) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

After a Category Four hurricane uncovers wreckage along Florida's west coast, an old woman visits White stalwart Doc Ford, insisting that a newly exposed German submarine will reveal the truth about a loved one lost while reputedly hooking up with the sub's crew. But soon it is apparent that her story doesn't hold (sea)water. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A Category 4 hurricane whips through Florida's West Coast and blows Doc Ford (Dead of Night, 2005, etc.) back to World War II. Start with the Dark Light, the boat sunk with all hands near Sanibel Island, during the famously destructive hurricane of Oct. 20, 1944. No, start with the mysterious woman who lives alone in Southland, the beach-front mansion that, like her, has seen better days. She's the one who links the doomed vessel with the vicious circle that was the German high command during the waning days of WWII. Or start with Bern Heller, an unredeemed sociopath with grisly secrets and a connection to the Dark Light that will shock even him. White keeps them all in play as he spins one of the most intriguing plots-the 13th-of the Doc Ford series. So there's Doc fortuitously happening on the wrecked Dark Light made newly accessible by the vagaries of the storm. Doc, a marine biologist and occasional diver, finds some arresting stuff as he strolls the briny bottom, most notably a diamond-studded brooch shaped like a death's head with a swastika at its center. Plus other dismal mementos of the Third Reich. How to account for them? When Doc meets the dark lady of Southland, the tale begins to unfold, a tale that reaches back and forth in time, remarkable for the duplicity of its cast and the diversity of its twisting and turning. It has to do with murder, with spies, with star-crossed lovers and with a range of celebrated people swinging wide enough to include Henry Ford, Adolph Hitler and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Because White cuts back on the digressive sermonizing that has slowed his recent storytelling, Doc (brain of a Nobelist, heart of a Rambo) gets a renewed chance to shine.

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