Dead Silence by Randy Wayne White
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Every so often I give another swing to a book by Randy Wayne White. Each time I walk away disappointed. There are a number of reasons why I know that happens. One is the embracing of illegal drugs. To me this makes the characters dirty and I immediately don’t like them. In this book practically all the “good” guys are involved in illegal drugs of some sort. This puts me in an odd position with the bad guys who don’t use drugs. I found myself rooting for them at times. Since the book’s intent is to have some kind of good guy stop the bad guy, I’m obviously having trouble with the intent. This all pointing to White’s pointed political viewpoints being intertwined with the characters so that it is often difficult to say one is bad or good. If that is his intent then his books really stink because it leaves him with the option of killing off even the reoccurring characters. I mean, what the Hey, if he doesn’t know who is after who or if they even should be, just knock off the Tomlinson character, which I think would be a step in the right direction.

About the story: Kidnapping, Senators, Castro, secret papers, horses makeup the core of this story. If that sound confusing, the book doesn’t help. All of it is convoluted and way too much coincidentally happens in one area. There’s a whole thing about Castro papers that really doesn’t matter to the plot except as a MacGuffin. There is waaaaay too much about the kidnap victim that really bogs things down.

All in all, as much as I dislike White books, this one also gets a thumbs down due to the plot.

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