Gone, by Randy Wayne White (Putnam; $25.95)

 I’ve always enjoyed Randy Wayne White’s Doc Ford mysteries. I’m a sucker for mysteries set in Florida, and his were among the best. So I was excited to learn that he had started a new series, focusing this time on a young fishing guide/sleuth named Hannah Smith.

The series debut, Gone, made me laugh out loud—and it wasn’t meant to be funny.  Not because of flaws in any of the important elements. Smith was clever, brave and likeable. The plot was fine: a fabulously wealthy young woman has disappeared, perhaps in the company of a sadistic boyfriend, and Hannah is asked to find her and bring her home.  And the setting is great: it’s hard to go wrong when you set a mystery in the the steamy, fetid atmosphere of Florida.  

No, what’s wrong with Gone is that it was written from a woman’s perspective by a man obsessed with breasts.   

Seriously. 

The first time I noticed it was when Hannah, wanting to perk herself up, dresses up and checks herself out in the mirror. She delights in looking at herself as she "spills out of her favorite 34D bra.” The sight gets makes her get “teary-eyed and smile, because she, in her own mind, is about as shapely as an ironing board balancing two peas.” 

I have yet to meet the woman who gets teary-eyed at the sight of herself “spilling out” of a bra. The sight might well bring a man to tears—as a woman, I wouldn’t presume to know. But to a woman? “Spilling out” just means it’s time to buy a bigger bra.

Several pages later, a gay friend says to her, “’I’ve never opened a Playboy magazine in my life, but, I swear, Hannah, even I love your tits.’”

A bit later, she interviews an older woman who had been victimized by the guy who may be responsible for the young woman’s disappearance. She sees “what might have been a Chantelle bra, raspberry lace and glitter, draped over a velvet divan.”  The older woman, who starts out being hostile, eventually warms to Hannah, pressing a grocery bag on the younger woman as a gift; inside is the very same bra. “The fact that Mrs. Whitney and I wore the same bra size—34D—had helped, too. It created a sisterly feeling that is often the reward when women share private matters they wouldn’t entrust to a man.”

Oh, where to start with this one. First, older women don’t usually leave their bras out where guests can see them. Second, they never—you can take this one to the bank—present a used, unwashed bra to another woman as a gift. Third, the “fact” that the witness and Hannah wore the same bra size would be unknown to either woman, as women—and this may come as a surprise to men reading this--don’t exchange that information upon meeting each other.  And fourth, sharing the same bra size would not create a “sisterly feeling.”  I’m still laughing about this one. The only scenario in which I could imagine women bonding over sharing the same bra size is if they met in a plastic surgeon’s waiting room prior to augmentation.

(Much, much later, Hannah finds herself in danger and distracts the bad guy by unbuttoning her third button, “enough for him to see me spilling out of Mrs. Whitney’s 34 D Chantelle bra.” I’m hoping she at least laundered Mrs Whitney’s bra before wearing it. But again—spilling out? Clearly, they don’t wear the same bra size: 34 D may have fit Mrs. Whitney, but Hannah needs to go in for a fitting.) 

But wait: there’s more! A lawyer changes into a satin blouse which reveals “her bouncing breasts when she walked.” Another character has “grapefruit-sized implants.” The list goes on and on.

Randy Wayne White needs to forsake this experiment and go back to writing from a guy’s point of view. He can still include nonsense like this, if he thinks it would help move his plot along. For instance, he could describe Doc Ford getting “teary-eyed” as he looks at himself in a mirror, “spilling out” of an athletic supporter that’s too small. Or interviewing a witness, where he sees dirty boxers thrown over the back of a couch—only to find that the witness made him a gift of that same pair of dirty boxers. All the while sharing that brotherly bond that comes when two guys wear the same size underwear. 

Unbelievable.

Randy Wayne White: living up to his first name.