Deceived

July 15, 2013
At the start of bestseller White’s suspenseful second Hannah Smith novel (after 2012’s Gone), a 100-pound tarpon leaps out of the water onto Smith’s charter boat, knocking two men overboard, and Smith spots a shark heading their way. The scene sets the tone for this entertaining crime thriller in which Smith, drawn into a 20-year-old murder case and a real estate scam targeting senior citizens, tangles with pit bulls, an ax-wielding nemesis wearing a mask and a raincoat, and an industrial shredder and its drug-crazed operator. Doc Ford, the star of Night Moves and 19 other White novels, occasionally pops up as Smith’s love interest, but it’s Smith’s gutsy, no-nonsense attitude and fierce loyalty to her mother, Loretta, and her crime-solving pal, deputy sheriff Liberty Tupplemeyer, 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. Author tour. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM.

August 15, 2013
Her second case finds Sanibel PI Hannah Smith (Gone, 2012) just as attractive, just as game and just as clueless. You know your day isn't off to a good start when a giant tarpon lands on the deck of your fishing boat and sweeps your two latest clients into the shark-infested waters. But even after Hannah fishes out Delmont Chatham and Joel Ransler, things continue to go wrong. Her difficult mother, Loretta, is even more fretful than usual because she hasn't heard from her old friend and bingo partner Rosanna "Pinky" Helms. Loretta's new neighbor, Dr. Alice Candor, seems determined to harass both Loretta and Hannah, maybe even to the point of getting Loretta's house condemned and Loretta committed. And since Dr. Candor and her ineffectual CPA husband, Raymond, have already pled guilty to a slew of felonies concerning their house-of-cards health care empire back in Ohio, her enmity is serious business. There are bright spots along the way. Ransler, unmasked as a special prosecutor for neighboring Senatee County, hires the inexperienced Hannah, who inherited her private eye's license from her uncle Jake, to investigate Fisherfolk, a charitable organization so patently bogus that Pinky's no-account children, Mica and Crystal, are listed as directors along with Levi Thurloe, the mentally challenged giant Hannah protected from bullying when they were in school together. And Hannah enjoys a few sweet nights with longtime series hero Doc Marion Ford (Night Moves, 2013, etc.) before he takes off for Venezuela and leaves her with only Deputy Liberty Tupplemeyer for help. The two strong women bond affectingly, but they're no great shakes as detectives. More interested in giving its heroine good scenes and good dialogue than a good mystery or the skills to solve it. The pace is so relaxed readers may find themselves nodding off.

COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from September 15, 2013
Introduced in Gone (2012), fishing guide and sometime PI Hannah Smith returns, and her plate is full. Her willful and sometimes flaky mother is driving her crazy, and Hannah has decided that she's in love with Doc Ford, star of White's other series. But Doc takes off unexpectedly for Venezuela, and Hannah's life becomes far dicier: a bogus charity that is scamming senior citizens is really a front for a real-estate-development scheme that could wipe out Hannah's tiny home town, and the people behind the scheme are utterly ruthless. Strong-willed and tough-minded, Hannah is also suspicious of just about everyone she encounters, and some of these suspicions function as red herrings. Bogus charities and rapacious real-estate developers are as quintessentially Florida as orange juice, but White also tosses in other Florida verities, including willful destruction of ecological and anthropological treasures, industrial-scale Medicare fraud, and the heyday of Florida drug smuggling and its tragic impact on thousands of Floridians. But the reliance on familiar themes in Florida crime fiction is no quibble; Hannah brings a fresh perspective to White's much-loved southwest Florida world.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)