Product Description
It 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.
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 good plot - too much rambling
Read this book, decent plot decent facts, but man is there some filler in this book that makes it almost painful to read...I skipped some pages entirely and kept right along with the book...the kicker for me was the line where the lost male diver harkens back to his days as an assistant junior varsity football coach to summons up his motivational skills...assisstant JV coach, come on
decent plot, way too easy help from the Spooks, but I am going to try some more of his earlier novels, hopefully they are more plot and less sap...if you are into reading flowing descriptions of everything including buddhist ways, then grab this book...if you are looking for heartier book...search his earlier pieces
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 Excellent series ( trngdev )
I started this series with Shark River, but the order you read them doesn't really matter. They're all well written and you can count on a solid plot.
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Great new discovery. ( pmesser )
White is such a great new discovery for crime fiction. Everglades was excellent read, but this one is perhaps my favorite of the year. Having not spent any time in Florida, Smith paints such a vivid and colorful picture. ANd the details of Gulf weather and currents is like an advanced class. SMith is very authentic. We have Burke for Louisiana, Lescroart for San Francisco, Connelly for Los Angeles, McGaritty for New Mexico....and now White for Florida.
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 Entertaining thriller based on a true story ( -38- )
When I worked for The News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla., I was one of the reporters who covered the disappearance of three SCUBA divers & the rescue of a fourth from a tower miles out at sea--the story on which Randy Wayne White based this novel. So I know how faithful White is in this book to the original story.
White made a great choice by being very faithful to the facts of the story while at the same time completely changing the characters involved. That was a respectful, sensitive way to approach this fictionalization--and it probably served him well as a writer.
"Twelve Mile Limit" suffers from a problem I've found in other books set in real places. To my mind, White relies too much on names of places & institutions to convey a sense of place & doesn't do enough actual description. When he does describe, he's good at it--especially when it's something that's clearly a personal passion, such as the Gulf of Mexico. The scene where Doc Ford gets into the water in the middle of the night rings very true, for example. And that's because it is--White tells us at the end of the book that he did the same as part of his research.
The only other book I've read in the series is the first, "Sanibel Flats," which had a wonderful description of U.S. Highway 41 but (I felt at the time) little else to make it really stand out. "Twelve Mile Limit" is a great improvement & makes me interested in reading more in the series, especially as some reviewers here say it's not one of the strongest entries.
There are some lost opportunities here, especially more development of the "Heart of Darkness" idea, which could have used probably a couple more pages of development in total that would have made it really good.
White's personal story is inspiring. As I recall it, he once worked in Southwest Florida stringing telephone lines or some such, then did four years at The News-Press, then wisely left when daily newspapering had helped his writing & ear & eye & before it killed his creativity. Over a period of about 15 years, he turned himself into a nationally known outdoors writer & author. It's a great story.
I like White's inclusion of the (real) human trafficking issue in the novel. Also, this is true to the actual events in that it was one of the theories about what happened.
Many of White's Florida settings have recently been trashed by Hurricane Charley. I hope Southwest Floridians recover quickly. Knowing the spirit of the region & remembering the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew on the opposite coast, they will.
Lastly, I got to read this book as a result of the donation of free books for deployed Soldiers. If you ever get the opportunity to donate books to this cause, it's a great program that actually benefits Soldiers & is greatly appreciated. I have not paid for a book since I deployed & never lack for new material to read.
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Latest novel in the Doc Ford series ( david_w_nicholas )
Dr. Marion "Doc" Ford is a marine biologist who lives in a house on stilts, off the west coast of Florida, and makes a living harvesting and supplying labs and schools with ocean wildlife local to the area. However, he has a dark past, having worked as one of the "Negotiators," a shadowy organization that works for the U.S. Government. The Negotiators have a talk with people who are being unreasonable, and make them see the error of their ways. Typically, the individual involved is an international drug kingpin who won't see the error of his ways and donate all of his loot to charity, and the solution is killing him. Ford has left all of that behind because it bothered his conscience.In this novel, a close friend and employee of Ford has been lost at sea. One of the three people on the boat with her was rescued, and provides an account of what happened, but no matter how hard the Coast Guard looks, the other three companions aren't found. When Ford is approached by the survivor, and told that there was a boat that perhaps picked up the other survivors, he uses his connections with people in the government to investigate, and dives into an adventure to rescue his friend. I enjoyed this book, and especially enjoy the way the author makes things interesting and suspenseful without having a blazing shootout every thirty pages (though those are fun, too). Ford is almost disdainful of guns, and those who use them, but not stupid enough to walk into a gunfight carrying a knife or something. There's also a nice subplot involving an environmentalist vs. fisherman battle that sounds so real and familiar that it must either be true or based on truth. I really enjoyed this book.
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