---

"Billingsgate Shoal"

(Reviewed by Judi Clark APR 19, 1999)

Doc Adams is a Massachusetts based dentist/oral surgeon who keeps getting drawn into investigations.Doc Adams looks out over the Billingsgate Shoals from the deck of his Cape Cod home and sees a trawler run aground. He actually jogs out as best he can during low tide.  Later a friend of his is sent scuba diving on the site and the friend, of course, ends up dead.  So our dentist gets involved. OK, it's a little unbelievable that a dentist is this savvy about staying alive when there's so many bad guys. But I let it pass. Its a good sailing story and a excellent page turner.  And who am I to argue with the experts? Boyer won the 1983 Edgar Award for Billingsgate Shoal.

I have been trying to remember the name of this book and its author since I began this web site. If I had the charts at my house rather having left them on the boat, I would have figured it out sooner. I'll admit I was a little distracted while we navigated the Billingsgate Shoal, to put into harbor at Wellfleet, since I was recalling key points of this novel which I had just read. Finally, while looking for information on another writer, this book popped up and I knew I had to drop everything and stick it on my Favorite Sleuths bookshelf as a recommended read.

• Amazon reader rating: from 4 reviews

---

(back to top)

---

Bibliography: (with links to Amazon.com)

Doc Adams Series:

• Billingsgate Shoal (1982)
• The Penny Ferry (1984)
• The Daisy Ducks (1986)
• Moscow Metal (1987)
• The Whale's Footprints (1988)
• Gone to Earth (1990)
• Yellow Bird (1991)
• Pirate Trade (1994)
• The Man Who Whispered (1998)

Sherlock Holmes novels:

• The Giant Rat of Sumatra (1976)
• A Sherlockian Quartet (1999)

Buck Gentry:

• Buck Gentry: A Novel fo the Southern Mountains (2005)

 

(back to top)

---

Book Marks:

• The Mystery of Rick Boyer
• Meet Doc Adams

 

(back to top)

---

About the Author:

Boyer Boyer, a native of Evanston, Illinois, majored in English at Denison University and earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa, studying under renowned sci-fi writer Kurt Vonnegut.

Boyer has taught high school, served as a college sales rep for Little, Brown & Co. and since 1988, teaches English at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C. He specializes in Fiction Writing and Writing for the Professions.

Boyer is the author of The Giant Rat of Sumatra and ten other suspense novels, including his Doc Adams series. He wrote the original best-selling nonfiction guide to life in the U.S., Places Rated (1982), and has appeared on The Today Show, PM Magazine, and 20/20. Boyer won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for his Doc Adams series.

He divides his time between Asheville and Cullowhee and lives with his two sons, Clay and Ted. His latest project is researching background material for a novel featuring a new character: Buck Gentry, a game warden who lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina.