Black Widow

Randy Wayne White

9/27/2008

Marion "Doc" Ford's goddaughter, Shay Money, is getting married soon to a man who is getting into politics. Shay is a successful business woman and has done very well for herself. Then she and her three friends/bridesmaids went to a Caribbean Island for a weekend getaway about a month before the wedding. Things got a little out of control with some island men. They'd forget it except they were videotaped and now Shay is being blackmailed. She turns to Doc to help her out of this jam.

Doc, who has been getting bored with his new life of retirement of only being a marine biologist, decides he needs to go to the island and retrieve the original of the video. Perhaps he can break up a blackmail ring at the same time. He consults with his good friend Tomlinson, then heads down to the Eastern Caribbean on his own.

Once there he learns there is more corruption on the island than he anticipated. Not only is there a sophisticated blackmail ring established, but there are voodoo practices, vengeance killings, sexual pandering, an exclusive "spa" where the rich and famous retreat, and the Widow who run everything. Doc may not be able to do this on his own. He meets an elderly British gentleman who used to be a high level spy for the United Kingdom. (Although never given his old name, we can guess the man is an older James Bond.)

In Black Widow, once Doc has left his home on Sanibel Island and arrives down south, the action is constant through the rest of the book. The plots follows itself thru the proper steps, with each solved puzzle piece revealing more, not less, mystery and questions in this business. Add in four successful women being blackmailed. Doc has less than a week until Shay's wedding. He has to find the videotape for her, stop the drug supply in to protect others, break the blackmailing ring, and take his personal revenge on the men who set up Shay and her friends.

I was puzzled about a couple things from the ongoing story line. I thought Doc was no longer working for the government and hadn't for years. Yet Black Widow implies he has only been retired a few years and wants his old job back. Admittedly I haven't read all the earlier novels Randy Wayne White wrote in this series, but I thought Doc had been out of the game for a while. Now it seems he wants his old job back. But isn't he just enough advanced in years that he may not be able to do just that?

The main antagonist's secret isn't a surprise. Shay's final action is. Doc remains the secretive marine biologist who is so much more - still pleasing to the reader. Black Widow is an enjoyable - and cautionary - novel.

You can find more about this book at .

Sanibel Flats
The Heat Islands
The Man Who Invented Florida
Captiva
North of Havana
The Mangrove Coast
Ten Thousand Islands
Shark River
Twelve Mile Limit
Everglades
Tampa Burn
Dead of Night
Dark Light
Hunter's Moon
Black Widow