Floater

by Joseph Koenig

A sheriff combs the Everglades for the charming sociopath who killed his ex-wife in this Edgar Award–nominated mystery. Years after their marriage collapses, Buck White splurges on Irene’s coffin. She was found floating in a cypress swamp behind a Seminole village, her beauty marred by sadistic violence, a guitar string buried so deep in her neck that it takes two autopsies to dig it out. Sheriff White knows neither the time nor place of death, but the savaged corpse tells him to look for a serial white, under forty, antisocial, and with a fondness for liquor. The man White is tracking turns out to be a special kind of crazy. Uncommonly charismatic, he has the wit and cunning to elude law enforcement while seducing new victims. More women will die before White gets on his trail, but no one will hurt the sheriff as badly as Irene.

252 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 1987

About the author

Joseph Koenig is an author of hard-boiled fiction. A former crime reporter, he won critical acclaim and an Edgar nomination for his first novel, Floater (1986), a grimly violent story of con men, cops, and killers in the Florida Everglades. His next two novels were Little Odessa (1988), a darkly comic tale of life in New York’s Ukrainian underworld, and Smugglers Notch (1989), a story of brutal murder in snowbound Vermont. Koenig’s fourth novel, the groundbreaking Brides of Blood (1993), won strong reviews for its elegant treatment of police procedure in Islamic Iran.

For nearly two decades after Brides of Blood, Koenig did not publish. But in 2012 the pulp-style publishing house Hard Case Crime released his newest novel, False Negative, a rollicking mystery about a journalist who, like Koenig once did, writes for true-crime magazines.

Reviews

[Ginny Koenig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great thriller. I loved the backdrop of Florida--Hollywood, Homestead and Everglades areas--helped you create nice imagery. His writing gave you a visual picture of the what and where. I would have given this 4.5 starts but I do not have that option. If you are looking for a thriller/mystery, this is a good read.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: bodies are being found in the Everglades, and a relentless sheriff hunts an elusive criminal who stalks with savage intensity.

[Otto Penzler · Rating 4 out of 5]

When a series of wealthy women are found floating in Florida’s Everglades and bayous, fear assails this once peaceful community. The Miami police cannot point to a killer with any certainty, and the longer it takes them to solve the serial murders, more women wind up dead: floating in the swamplands like the rest of the killer’s victims. Once Sheriff Buck White’s ex-wife is found amongst the victims however, his vow for revenge sends him on a relentless search for a killer who feels no remorse.

Koenig is a former crime reporter with a tight grip on the dark realities of Florida’s crime history. Once contributor to Front Page Detective, New Black Mast Quarterly, and other true crime journals, Koenig now writes thriller fiction with relentless truth and an avid understanding of the classic serial killer. Floater is Koenig’s debut book, and was nominated in 1987 for an Edgar award for Best First Novel.

[Alton Motobu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Black sheriff in Florida everglades country must find his wife's murderer. But most of book concerns suave conman/kidnapper/murderer who preys on rich women and likes to drown them in the bathtub. Sheriff eventually kills him, but he was not the killer of the sheriff's wife. Erratic.