When Doc Ford's friend--the simplest and sweetest resident of Sanibel Island--is framed for murder, Doc heads to Florida's dark side to save him and the island from a rising tide of land-grab schemes, blood money, and violence. Marine biologist and former secret operative Doc Ford is lazily poling his skiff along Southwest Florida's flat copper sea in search of sea anemones, when he runs into the body of the most hated man on Sanibel Island-Marvin...

An environmental war breaks out in Florida between sports fishermen and commercial fishermen who are despoiling the waters. With friends in both camps Doc Ford, a government agent turned marine biologist, prefers to stay neutral. But a man's death in the explosion of a jetty brings him into it all the same. By the author of The Man Who Invented Florida.

Florida marine biologist Doc Ford receives a call for help from a friend whose boat strayed into Cuban waters. Equipped with money for fines, bills and bribes, Ford arrives in Havana with his girlfriend and as he searches for his friend becomes involved in a hunt for the coffin of Columbus.