Tampa Burn, by Randy Wayne White, struck me as a fascinating study in excellent story set-up and development, capped by a middling resolution. The amateur psychological wiseacre in me suspects that the author himself must be ambivalent about the kind of stories he writes, and that ambivalence is working itself out in the reader’s sight.

If you’re not already familiar with him, Marion (“Doc”) Ford, White’s continuing hero, is a semi-retired US government commando and assassin, now living in happy obscurity in Florida, making his living as a marine biologist. His peace is frequently disturbed, however, sometimes by other people’s problems which can only be solved with his special skills, and sometimes by a call from his espionage handlers, who still keep him on a slack string.

In terms of creating and building dramatic tension, Tampa Burn is admirable. I thought, as I read, that I’d rarely come across a suspense novel so well plotted. At the beginning, Doc is contemplating proposing to his long-time on-again, off-again girlfriend, Dewey Nye. Suddenly his life is invaded by his old lover Pilar Fuentes, the one other woman he’s never been able to quite get over. She has recently informed Doc that her teenaged son Laken is in fact his (Doc’s) son. Doc has been keeping in touch with the boy, but Pilar has kept him at a distance. Up until now.

Now Laken has been kidnapped, apparently by a mysterious figure known across Central America as Incendiaro—the Burner. He has that name because he is horribly disfigured by burn scars himself, and gets pleasure from watching other people burn.

Of course Doc will jump into action. He forgets himself so far as to kiss Pilar, only to be observed by Dewey, who had come to give him some news important to their relationship.

Doc, along with his genius-stoner-mystic friend Tomlinson, sets about dealing with the kidnappers’ demands. But the kidnappers double-cross their employer, and Doc soon has reason to suspect he too may have been double-crossed by people he trusted (even Tomlinson). And he has his own unfaithfulness to Dewey to try to make right.

It’s page-turning stuff. Unfortunately, it all issues (in my opinion) in a climax which I (for one) found confusing and unsatisfactory. This was followed by a final revelation which seemed to contradict something Doc appeared to have learned earlier, a personal matter that seemed settled.

So Tampa Burn was a bit of a disappointment. In this case, the journey is indeed better than the arrival.

I have to admit I’m also troubled by the attitude toward sex depicted, again and again, in these books, an attitude common in popular culture today. Although White recognizes the hurt casual sex can cause, it’s more or less taken for granted that everyone does it all the time. Marriage is special only in the sense that it’s the big prize for the lover you like most.

Cautions for language as well.