Not the best story in this amazing series. Still, it was good. ( )

Doc Ford lets himself get talked into diving a remote Florida lake to search for a downed plane loaded with gold Fulgencio Batista smuggled out of Cuba as he was overthrown by Castro. In the lake, Doc's friend Tomlinson and another diver are trapped in a cave collapse with about an hour of air left in their tanks. In the fiction tradition of piling trouble upon trouble, two gold-seeking murderers on the run happen upon the group. And there’s a massive Komodo Dragon that was apparently also on the plane and has had fifty years to grow and reproduce asexually to ensure a continuing population of the beasts.

Unique to the Doc Ford series, the story takes place almost entirely in and around the small lake. There’s still plenty of gear and gadgetry and obviously much research has been done. This is a fast moving story and a good change of pace in the series. ( )

For some reason I like reading RWW. I think it is because they involve older characters who are generally doing interesting and adventurous things. However, overall they are always just okay reads.

I’d say my first problem is the excessive internal dialogs, at times it seems like that makes up 80% of the books. Instead of simply doing more stuff, it is an endless narrative of every last thought of every single character. And that can get confusing as the chapters jump back in time to pick up the thoughts of whomever from a few chapters back. So I find myself reading and then stopping... huh, what... what’s going on... oh, I get it, now we’re back to this point in the story and now have to find out what was going through that person’s mind at that point in time. Okay, got it.

Another thing I realized is that the stories are just way to complex. The elements of the stories are generally all good. And I get the feeling that RWW gets these great ideas and can’t give them up until they play out into these massive, convoluted stories. But every time, I can’t help but think... this would never happen (not even in fiction). The question is: why would anyone make it a thousand times harder than it has to be... except to fill out hundreds of pages... like, maybe, to add hundreds of pages internal dialogs! There are just too many moving parts making an implausible story even more implausible. That gets old.

And then there is Doc who, like a ninja, can kill 73 different ways just by looking at someone... but is always being bested by some toothless knuckle-dragger with an IQ in the low double digits. After a while I can’t help but think that the best thing that can happen is that Marion Ford finally dies... and good riddance! What I mean is that stupid stuff happening to drag out the story and add suspense doesn’t really do it for me. That’s why I like the RWW / Doc Ford books, but they always seem to leave me somewhat disappointed when I finish them. ( )

Scary! ( )

Synopsis: Doc, Tomlinson, Arlis (an old hunting buddy), and Will (a young Indian from Arizona who is working off some criminal charges) are going out do dive in a sink hole. Arlis has bought the land with the sink hold because he is convinced that a plane from Cuba loaded with gold went down in that water. The rancher wanted to see the area because of the giant alligator that had for years been killing full grown cattle and hadn’t ever been caught. Meanwhile in another part of Florida, two ex-cons decided to rob an old man. What they didn’t count on was that he’d have a shot gun; they killed him, his housekeeper and her family then went on the lam. As luck would have it, they end up in the area that Doc and company are exploring; the legend of the giant gator is a reality, but it’s not a gator. It’s something much worse.

Review: This is one of RWW’s best stories. However, I didn’t like the extensive background given for all of the characters between the actual action. It was as though he had a word quota to fill. ( )