North of Havana (Doc Ford Series #5)

Publishers Weekly - Cahners\\Publishers_Weekly

Following the south Florida eco-suspense of Captiva (1996), White continues to throw plausability happily, energetically, to the winds. His swashbuckling modern-day Thoreau, narrator Doc Ford, evades death and keeps an appointment with destiny when he is revisited by the love of his life, Pilar Balserio, the beautiful ruling sovereign of the mythical banana republic of Masagua (first seen in Sanibel Flats). Busily engaged in the serious business of diverting seductive Dewey, a sexually ambivalent golf pro, from the emotional trauma of a jilting by her lesbian lover, Doc is rudely interrupted by a phone call from his sidekick, the aging flower child Tomlinson, whose sailboat has just been impounded in Castro's Havana. Armed with $10,000 in cash and accompanied by Dewey, who shows signs of responding to his sexual therapy, Doc heads for Cuba. There, imperiled by his secret history as a covert agent once sent on an anti-Castro mission, Doc finds Tomlinson missing. Soon, Dewey is kidnapped in a wild plot involving Tomlinson's race against Castro and Santeria priests to find the mythical treasure of Columbus's coffin. The chaos resolves in a mission that's as romantic as it is impossible. Rich in personality and atmosphere, this latest Doc Ford adventure features breakneck pacing and muscular prose filled with banter and graveyard whistling. White never blushes at an outrageous plot turn, but in his capable hands, neither will his readers.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Library Journal

A few days before Christmas, marine biologist and former CIA operative Marion "Doc" Ford receives a call from a pal whose sailboat has strayed into Cuban waters. The friend needs Ford's help to bribe officials and get back his impounded boat. Complicating his life still further, an impossible love named Dewey has arrived that afternoon. Now Ford must go to Cuba, a dangerous trip because of his clandestine operations there that is made more dangerous by Dewey's insistence on accompanying him. What Ford encounters in Cuba is not simple government graft but a plot to eliminate Castro, and if Ford and his friends are to survive he must risk an alliance with a former Soviet agent, one of a cadre with its own reasons for wanting him dead. This is a fine addition to White's Doc Ford series (e.g., Captiva, Putnam, 1996), crackling with both tension and humor. For most popular collections.Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.

Kirkus Reviews

Just as Marion "Doc" Ford is at the point of dramatically improving his acquaintance with his old friend Dewey Nye (she's already got half her underwear off), his phone rings, and his even older friend, dropout prophet Tomlinson, is squawking about how the trip his pickup Julia DeGlorio talked him into taking—from Sanibel to an island north of Cuba—turned sour when Tomlinson woke up to find they'd drifted into Cuban waters and were being held along with his beloved boat in lieu of storage charges. Couldn't Doc drop whatever he was doing and sneak down to bail his buddy out? Of course he could, in a flash—if it were only that simple. But Doc and Dewey haven't spent a whole night on the island before he realizes that Tomlinson hasn't been leveling with him. He's not just looking for cash for bail and bribes; he's gotten involved in a mind-bogglingly complex assassination plot, one whose tangled roots link a peyote- supplying Santería priest, a family of unsuccessful assassins, and a fateful baseball game in which Doc, as catcher, once refused to let Fidel Castro throw anything but fastballs. Maybe that's why Castro's now scouring the island for Doc—but it doesn't begin to explain why Doc will be risking life and limb to prevent Castro's execution.

Much manly action, lots of manly aperçus, but it's all too fast and furious to allow the distinctive pleasures of the voice White revealed in The Man Who Invented Florida (1993) and Captiva