Seduced

One

I was enjoying the conversation with a man I used to date, a biologist named Marion Ford, until the subject swung from Florida oranges to a giant snake. He d seen it crossing a bay south of the island where I grew up and still occasionally reside.

How far south?

A ways. We were flying back from Key West.

That s where you disappeared to?

I ve been traveling, he said, which was typical. It was a Burmese python twelve, maybe fifteen feet long. Too big for a boa. Hard to be sure of the size because it was swimming, but that s not the point.

It is to me, I said. If you re trying to scare me into moving closer to your lab, I m flattered, but I d prefer the particulars first. There are better ways than inventing snakes.

Invent? He was mystified. Marion has warmth, if you get to know him, but he is slow to recognize playful humor.

I don t doubt you saw it, but there s a hundred miles of coast between here and the Keys. Was the snake closer to Naples or Sanibel Island?

Let me finish. I was making a connection between the parasites killing your orange trees and higher-profile exotics like pythons, boas, a whole long list of reptiles that are taking over the state. Not just reptiles, of course. Fire ants have all but destroyed the quail population. Brazilian pepper trees are another example, but they were intentionally introduced by state biologists, so

Marion, I said patiently, you know I m not fond of snakes, and you know why. Please stick to the subject.

I thought I was.

You were for a while. Now you re not.

I was aboard a tidy Marlow cabin cruiser that is my home, neatening up the galley, with the phone to my ear. As we talked, I could look out the cabin door and see the family dock built by my late Uncle Jake as it wobbled through the mangroves. Across the road, atop an Indian mound, was an old yellow-pine Cracker house with a tin roof and a wraparound porch. Veiled by screening were ceiling fans, a summer

Besides the Hannah Smith novels Gone, Deceived, and Haunted, Randy Wayne White is the author of twenty-four Doc Ford novels, most recently Cuba Straits, Deep Blue, and Mangrove Lightning. He has also published four collections of his columns for Outside magazine and elsewhere. In 2002, a one-hour documentary film called The Gift of the Game, about the author's trip to Cuba to find the remnants of the Little League teams founded by Ernest Hemingway in the days before Castro, won the Best of the Fest award from the 2002 Woods Hole Film Festival, then was bought by PBS and broadcast in the spring and summer of 2003. A veteran fishing guide who at one time had his own local PBS show, White lives on Sanibel Island, Florida.

PRAISE FOR SEDUCED

Her fourth outing may be her best to date, with a particularly effective climactic sequence that knots together every menace, and every sorrow, she faces. Kirkus Reviews

Fans of mysteries that show an appreciation of the great outdoors will love this gun-toting, plane-flying, boat-living heroine. Booklist

A tale of citrus, pythons, and intrigue [with] a breathless and nightmarish finale. By the closing chapter of Seduced, Hannah Smith s life will be changed in ways she couldn t have imagined. Tampa Bay Times

Pythons, orange trees of ancient stock, infidelity, madness, and greed. Is that all there is? Well, no. There is Mr. White s gloriously complicated, totally unglamorous, and fiercely independent Hannah Smith. Florida Weekly



PRAISE FOR THE HANNAH SMITH SERIES

Hannah Smith is a big woman, tall and strong, a fishing guide and a part-time investigator. She traces her Southwest Florida family back generations the area s history is hers as well. She is a perfect foil for Doc Ford. Each is reliable, steadfast, boat- and weather-savvy, and neither can pass up a wrong that needs righting. Orlando Sentinel
 
Hannah s strength is just one of the facets of her character that has fans excited. Extremely well written, filled with suspense . . . a memorable character. Suspense Magazine
 
Randy Wayne White has made Florida s Gulf Coast an iconic part of crime fiction with his Doc Ford novels and here proves Hannah has found her place in crime fiction, too. South Florida Sun-Sentinel
 
It s Smith s gutsy, no-nonsense attitude and fierce loyalty that gives the story its heart. White s evocative descriptions of life on Florida s Gulf Coast, both human and animal, win this series its rightful place in the ever-popular Florida crime fiction genre. Publishers Weekly
 
Breathtaking, harrowing, and immensely suspenseful, the chills and thrills of Haunted will leave readers smiling.