Sam Sawyer is a fishing guide and part-time sleuth living in the Florida Keys. He escaped a floundering academic career to realize his childhood dream of becoming a guide. But it has come at a heavy price, because his wife and colleague has chosen to remain behind in the halls of ivy. They see each other all too rarely, and lately things have gotten decidedly chilly. Sam's life takes an unexpected turn when he discovers a pair of shoes lying next to a huge crocodile on a sandy bank deep in the everglades, and somebody's feet are in the shoes. Sam discovers that they belonged to a woman called Mable, who lived reclusively on an isolated key in Florida Bay. But how did her shoes and feet end up back in the glades, and who was responsible? Was it the looter of Native American artifacts from a shell mound on the key, or the unscrupulous owner of a pet store in Miami who had been poaching crocodiles? Then Sam discovers a small population of a rare bird on the key. There are rumors that some powerful people have a big development planned for Mable's key, and discovery of the endangered bird could put all that in jeopardy. Before Sam's life can return to anything like normal, he must find out who killed Mable, and at the same time decide if and how he can rescue a personal life that seems to be running up on the rocks.
About the Author: Carl and Jane Bock are retired Professors of Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Carl received his PhD in Zoology from the University of California at Berkeley, while Jane holds three degrees in Botany, a B.A. from Duke, and M.A. from the University of Indiana, and a PhD from Berkeley. Carl is an ornithologist and conservation biologist. Jane is a plant ecologist and an internationally recognized expert in the use of plant evidence in criminal investigations. She is co-author with David Norris of Forensic Plant Science (Elsevier-Academic Press, 2016). They have co- authored numerous articles and two books based on their fieldwork in the Southwest: The View from Bald Hill (University of California Press, 2000), and Sonoita Plain: Views from a Southwestern Grassland (with photographs by Stephen Strom; University of Arizona Press, 2005). Now largely retired from academic life, the Bocks have turned their creative efforts toward fiction writing, and are co-authors of two ongoing mystery series, the Arizona Borderlands Mysteries, and the Florida Swamp Guide Mysteries, both published by Absolutely Amazing eBooks and Whiz Bang, LLC, of Key West. Coronado's Trail (Arizona Borderlands Mystery Number 1) was published in 2016, and Death Rattle (Arizona Borderlands Mystery Number Two) in 2017. The Swamp Guide is the first of their series set in the Florida Keys. Today the Bocks divide their time between Colorado, Arizona, and Florida, mostly fly fishing (Carl), fighting crime (Jane), and writing.