Doc Ford returns for the next episode of his career. You may have read the excellent Sanibel Flats, Shark River, Twelve Mile Limit and the rest. By now, it’s book twenty-eight, and Doc gets caught by an obvious trick, and I thought it was time he hung up his boots and went fishing. He does take more care; he let his guard down because a woman was involved.

TOMLINSON’S WAKE refers to an old pal who was last seen on his sailboat prior to a hurricane hitting Florida. The boat is now stuck on a reef off the Mosquito Coast of Honduras. The destruction on Sanibel Island and Dinkin's Bay Marina where Ford lives, was severe. He takes off to see if his friend survived. What follows is stranger than he could have imagined, like a cross between Indiana Jones and Heart of Darkness.

The rambling Tomlinson has a tree house in the jungle. He’s drunk and drugged most of the time. He is also assessed as having a brain bleed, which is giving him visions and confusing his sight. The flying doctor service wants him to go to a proper hospital, but he’s returned to his elderly horse called Roy and his tree house. Doc has to hear all about some return of the king of the ancient Mayan people, a boy and a jade death mask, but Doc, a wildlife biologist, is far more concerned about people trapping and selling industrial numbers of macaws and parrots. Then the two issues get combined.

We learn that in semi-civilised Honduras, roads are few, a politician can be bought, oil palm plantations are big money, and an archaeologist, formerly Miss Honduras, wants to get hold of precious artefacts. Doc sees trafficked child slaves forced into work for the rich, and he wants to release them equally with the birds. There’s also a fake shaman who uses a zombie drug on unsuspecting travellers and steals their money. Tomlinson hasn’t seen through this shaman yet, but the reader does, right away.

I didn’t mind the giant snakes, riverine reptiles and copious quantities of booze. I felt uncomfortable with the vast amount of drugs consumed, whether by the rich and idle or the poor who want to make their lives feel better. I haven’t visited Honduras, maybe it is just as the book says. Doc’s clandestine friends tell him the flow of drugs north is destabilising the economies of richer nations. Honduras won’t have an economy to speak of if the scenarios in TOMLINSON’S WAKE continue. If you like detailed thrillers set in a jungle environment, Randy Wayne White provides Doc Ford with more agency work, enemies and friends.