Ten Thousand Islands

One of the places we visited while in Florida was Sanibel Island, and her sister island, Captiva, recently somewhat flattened by Hurricane Charley. And by recently, I mean six months before our visit. Blue tarps were still visible on Captiva (Sanibel remained mostly untouched) and trees were lopped off at the top.

We decided to eat at Randy Wayne White's rum bar, "Doc Ford's," on Sanibel after our walk along Captiva's beaches. His books were on sale there, of course, as well as every kind of memorabilia you could ever want to pay for. I actually had some of his books at home, more book convention freebies (as I remember it, the publishing house's plebe pretty much shoved his books into my book bag).

Now, I'm not a fan of mystery writing in general, but ya gotta admire the P.R. mill these guys can churn out. A rum bar! Named after your main character! T-shirts and hats with your name on it! I hope RWW is cringing all the way to the bank.

As for the book? Fun to read if you've just been there. But remember, that's coming from someone who doesn't usually read mysteries, but who loves historical fiction. And fiction that is heartily evocative of a real place is right up there on my list of joys in reading. So, likeable if you've been there, likeable if you like mysteries, but otherwise - eh.