I like Randy Wayne White’s Doc Ford books, but I don’t love them. I think The Man Who Invented Florida is my favorite.

Marion “Doc” Ford is the hero of the series—a big, bespectacled marine biologist with a shadowy background in covert operations for the government. Periodically he finds himself investigating a mystery or carrying on his own private operation to rescue somebody. The Man Who Invented Florida, however, is barely a mystery at all. There is the puzzle of two government surveyors and a fishing show host who disappear in the Everglades, but it turns out (I hope this isn’t too much of a spoiler) to be less than meets the eye.

This book is, in fact, a farce. The real center of the narrative is Ford’s uncle Tucker Gatrell, the kind of man for whom the word “colorful” was coined. A former cowboy, fishing guide, gun runner and moonshiner, he’s devoted to his nephew, but his nephew hates his guts (for reasons that become dimly apparent toward the end). Tucker’s best friend is the Indian (don’t get riled; that’s what he calls himself) Joseph Egret. Joseph is the last of the Calusa, the original Florida Indians, to whom the Seminoles and Creeks are newcomers. As such he’s an outsider both among the Indians and the Whites. But he likes Tucker, because Tucker despises everybody all the same.

Tucker’s land is in danger of being seized by the government as an addition to Everglades National Park. But Tucker comes up with the claim that he’s discovered the Fountain of Youth on his land, and sets in motion a convoluted scheme to become a media hero, a scheme in which he wants Doc’s help—help he’s reluctant to give. Ford knows the old man will go to any length (including kidnapping, as it turns out) and exploit anyone to get his way, and he’s right. The book isn’t laugh-out-loud funny, but it’s certainly amusing watching Tucker go through his incorrigible paces.

I particularly liked this episode in the saga of Doc Ford for two reasons. One has to do with Ford’s friend Tomlinson. I’ve never liked Tomlinson, because I don’t like unreconstructed hippies, and Tomlinson is permanently stuck in the ’60s, a constant font of psychedelic piffle. But I give the author high marks for this speech, made to Tomlinson by a former girlfriend:

“I remember anger. That’s what I remember. I remember being angry as hell, absolutely sure that we were right. But now, when I think about it—and I try not to think about it—but, when I do, I have a very difficult time reconciling our self-righteousness with the fact that four or five million Vietnamese and Cambodians were slaughtered when we finally got our way. When we finally made them bring the troops home. It’s hard for me to feel righteous about that.”

Moments of truth like that remain pretty darn rare, even forty years later.

I was also pleased (in a base sort of way) to note that Ford, belying the tradition of paperback detectives, appears to be even more clueless with women than I am.

So I recommend The Man Who Invented Florida. For grownups.