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. Continue reading Tampa Burn, by Randy Wayne White →