Beach Reading - "Captiva", by Randy Wayne White

by Catherine Krantz

Less wacky and irreverent than Carl Hiaasen but as deeply entrenched in the environmental struggles of tropical paradises and just as enjoyable. If not more so for his obvious love of big strong women!

Captiva is an adventure crime mystery and a delightful page turning beach read. Set in a southwest Florida marina, the colorful cast of characters could likewise be found in any Mexican beach town. You have hot headed sport fishermen tangling with hot headed commercial fishermen, sarong wearing sages scanning the skies for messages from outer space, beautiful girls in bikinis, economic strife and a swarming array of imminent ecological disasters.

Add a beautiful strong willed fisherwoman and a loner secret-agent turned marine biologist and you have… more than you think. Surprisingly intelligent and insightful, the descriptions of tropical refugees (i.e. those who flee to the tropics in planes, trains, house boats and beat up pick up trucks…) will leave you sheepishly looking at your neighbors. I’d gleefully quote him but it might make us all a little self-conscious. The objective views of evil/not so evil commercial development and who it really hurts if it only helps the economy, hearken thoughtfully right back to any discussion of development anywhere. The age old struggles between the townies and the tourists, the working man’s wooden skiff and the pleasure man’s yacht that cost more than a mullet fisherman will make in a year, and how relative economy is always relative. With a mystery novel’s theme of snags and twists, engaging beyond what their predictability belies and all sorts of tidbits of real actual cleverness!

Sometimes I think the great joy of reading a clever writer is that they give validation to the opinions you knew you already had somewhere in the back of your mind, you just needed someone a little more clever to turn a phrase, make your idea a truth. Writers do that, seize on an idea and put it in words, and if someone reading it believes it, it becomes a universal truth cause, “Yeah, that’s right! And now its something I’ve read.” My personal Captiva favorites are: “It’s easier to allow a friendship to fade away then to suffer the occasional awkwardness it takes to maintain it.” And, “In any emotional debate the first casualty is reason.” And a whole slew of longer more interesting and occasionally mean spirited ones I won’t spoil by quoting.

Carl Hiaasen and now my new favorite Randy Wayne White fall in this fun genre of Florida nature versus commercial development in mystery crime fiction, a more sensitive new twist to the old detective story. The cynic in me would say its how publishers get the book buying women from the substantial market of romance novels into the less substantial market of crime fiction. But maybe it’s just a way to bridge the gap between the two, fast boats, fishing and gadgets and big, strong, sensitive guys falling in love. And really there’s no room for cynicism when you’re talking about fun beach reading! So mystery crime fiction set in a tropical paradise, you don’t have to be a resident of a tourist beach town to appreciate it but it helps. Helps make it even more interesting, even more clever and even more hilarious!

April 2003

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