Blood Island

A finalist for the National Best Books 2008 Awards, Longboat Key author H. Terrell Griffin's "Blood Island" is a fast-moving murder mystery that gets off to a rousing start.

Mr. Griffin's protagonist, Matt Royal, a retired lawyer, discovers a nude corpse in the Pelican Man's Bird Sanctuary on City Island in Sarasota. The next day, he hears from the love of his life, his ex-wife who lives in Atlanta. Now happily remarried, Laura contacts Matt because she needs help. Her stepdaughter Peggy, who was last seen in Sarasota while on spring break, has disappeared.

As Matt investigates, everything leads back to a blind corporation in the Bahamas. Finally, he recruits his buddies, Logan Hamilton, "recently retired from his executive position with a financial services company," and Jock Algren, a retired oil executive who "moonlighted as an operative of our country's most secretive spy agency." When Matt and Logan find a second body, the trouble doubles. Then Laura turns up missing and the trail leads Matt to Miami, then Key West, where he visits The Heaven Can't Wait Spa, a "religious" cathouse, and finally to Blood Island.

On Blood Island, in the Mule Keys, Matt is stunned to find himself in the heart of a religious cult headed by the Rev. Simmermon, who holds unusual revivals. In Macon, Ga., for example, at the time of Rev. Simmermon's revival, a shipment of C-4 explosives and weapons disappears from the National

Guard Armory.

And Rev. Simmermon has big plans for the explosives and weapons — plans that imperil the world. Bodies multiply and bullets scream through the air as Matt Royal and his compadres battle to defeat Rev. Simmermon and his well-financed, wellarmed followers.

What Mr. Griffin has done that makes this book so interesting is to bring the real Florida to life. Mr. Griffin, who practiced law in Orlando for 38 years before retiring to Longboat Key, writes with a genuine knowledge and love of Florida's quirky characters and places. His people are the folks you meet in the neighborhood bars and country churches, the beach bums, the homeless, the crackers you meet riding a Greyhound bus — not the slick suits, although the suits play a role. "Blood Island" is a good, solid read.