Review | Ten Thousand Islands by Randy Wayne White

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An Overview

Ten Thousand Islands is the 7th in the Doc Ford series. In this one, Doc has to take a closer look at the death of a young Florida artifact hunter. If you live in Florida or read up a lot on treasure and artifact hunters in the state, you may recognize part of the story that is the basis for this novel.

Main Body

The story surrounds a young artifact collector who is skilled at finding items of ancient Calusa Indian history along the coast of Florida. Dorothy Copeland, the artifact finder, has died and been buried, but has not been allowed to rest in peace.

Instead, someone knew what could have been buried with her, a gold medallion that she found while artifact hunting. Doc is called in by Dorothy’s mother to help after the young girl’s grave was broken into, most likely in search for the medallion.

As Doc and Tomlinson try to sort out what has happened and who would desecrate the grave of a teenager, they don’t realize they are being moved up the list of people who are in the way of a developer who thinks the medallion is a powerful ancient Indian item that can help whomever owns it.

Not only does this book have an air of reality to it, being based on a similar case from the 60s, but also White manages to give you a bit of a history and geography lesson without you even realizing it. Just reading this mystery will give you a greater insight into the topography of southwest Florida as well as the Indian tribe that inhabited this area hundreds of years ago.

This was another stunning book by White. It is one of the best in the early numbers of the series and one you should not miss. Just take a note, as soon as you start to listen to this one, you may want to clear your schedule as you may find yourself tuning out the rest of the world so you can tune in until the end of the book.

The Narration

Ron McClarty was a great voice for this book. His voice has a level of gruffness to it, which sounds to me like you would expect from Doc Ford…a voice with age and experience.