- Audio CD
- Publisher: Brilliance Audio on CD Value Priced; Abridged edition (Nov 20 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 145580777X
- ISBN-13: 978-1455807772
- Product Dimensions: 14 x 12.7 x 0.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 113 g
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Possessing an almost supernatural ability to read people's facial expressions and body language, Florida police officer Charlotte Monroe has a distinct advantage over the criminals she faces on the streets. Though the FBI wants her to join a task force composed of others with a similar talent, Monroe wants nothing to do with the organization. That changes, however, when she comes home to find her husband, a defense attorney, talking to Native American Jacob Panther, one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives. When Panther escapes and Monroe's schizophrenic daughter, Gracey, follows him, Monroe begins working with the FBI to recover her missing child. Merlington adeptly brings these characters to life, from the gruff-talking FBI agents to the deliberate speech of Hall's Native American characters. As Monroe, she alternates from professional police officer to frenzied mother, but it is her portrayal of Gracey that stands out; she convincingly expresses Gracey's schizophrenic highs and lows, as well as the multitude of voices echoing in her head. Based on the St. Martin's Minotaur hardcover (Forecasts, Oct. 25, 2004). (Dec. 2004)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.
From Booklist
Hall's Thorn novels continue to set the standard for Florida noir, but his stand-alone thrillers are equally distinguished. His latest stand-alone is no exception. It begins in Florida, where Coral Gables cop Charlotte Monroe and her defense lawyer husband, Parker, live with their schizophrenic teenage daughter, Gracey. The past reaches out and grabs the present in a deadly stranglehold when Jacob Panther, apparently related to one of Parker's childhood friends, turns up on the Monroes' doorstep and walks away with Gracey. Turns out Panther is on the FBI's most-wanted list. So begins a high-energy chase into the mountains of North Carolina, where Parker spent summers at his father's camp on sacred Cherokee soil. Hall can do all-stops-out action as well as anyone, but his plots always ride on a remarkably textured harmonic structure built of multidimensional characters with rich inner lives. This time the plot has multiple levels of its own, the seemingly simple manhunt immersing Charlotte, Parker, and Gracey in a generational feud with roots deep in the Cherokee nation and with potentially lethal connections to Parker's family. But playing against the main plot of saving Gracey are various questions of identity that plague the characters, both major and minor, and that frustrate any facile attempt to sort good guys from bad. A first-rate literary thriller, in the tradition of Stephen Hunter's Dirty White Boys (1994) and Wayne Johnson's recent The Devil You Know [BKL F 15 04]. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.ca
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.5 out of 5 stars (23 customer reviews)
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Odd, but engaging., Feb 21 2005
By Jerry Saperstein - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Forests of the Night: A Novel (Hardcover)
"Forests Of The Night" is built on a weak premise: that Charlotte Monroe has a "sixth sense" about people, particularly criminals. The story is really a mishmash of pseudoscientists trying to harness Charlotte's semi-psychic abilities, a decades old spat between Cherokees and a local family, a dark spot in Charlotte's and the public defender who rescued and then married her. Throw in a psychotic daughter, a son who magically appears, a direct line to the FBI's head and a few other odds and ends and you have it all.The story is stilted to a large degree, depending on contrivances to move the plot forward. There is never any real suspense, but Hall is still readable.
My suggestion is to put this one on the list for when there's nothing else you really want to read. It isn't bad; it just isn't a page-turner.
Jerry
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Another solid effort from James Hall, Jan 27 2006
By mrliteral - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Forests of the Night: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)
With Forests of the Night, James Hall takes a break from his series of Thorn novels. This book follows Miami cop Charlotte Monroe, a woman with an exceptional ability to read other people. One day she returns from work to find her husband Parker chatting with a young Cherokee named Jacob Panther. Charlotte quickly identifies him as one of the FBI's most wanted, but before she can do much, he gets away and goes into hiding.The bombshell of having this man in her house is followed by an even bigger one from Parker: Panther is apparently his son from a teenage romance. Parker, a criminal defense lawyer by trade, refuses to accept Panther's guilt, leading to a major conflict with Charlotte. In the middle is their sixteen year old, schizophrenic daughter who has run away in search of Panther.
Indeed, there is more to Panther's story than is initially presented, and it's all linked to an event that took place back in 1838 and is described in the prologue. (There is one historical error in this prologue, as Andrew Jackson is referred to as president; actually it was Martin Van Buren.) It is Charlotte's role to find out what this link is, even as she acts to get her daughter home.
This is a very good, well-written crime novel, although a little atypical for Hall. In most Hall books, the villain is a rather off-beat character who is warped in a unique way. In this book, the villain is a bit plainer and actually remains faceless through most of the story. Also, although Hall's books are never comic (unlike fellow Florida writer Carl Hiaasen), there usually is a touch of humor that this book doesn't have. That is not to say this book is flawed, but it is just a little different from other Hall books. However, whether you've read Hall or not, this book should not disappoint.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
This fast-paced thriller is a page-turner with smarts, Feb 20 2005
By Bookreporter - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Forests of the Night: A Novel (Hardcover)
This stand-alone thriller from South Florida series writer James W. Hall weaves an intricate tale of intrigue, from a posh neighborhood in Coral Gables, Florida to a hard-scrabble trailer in the hills of North Carolina. It spans generations of history, from a Cherokee murder in 1838 to current-day vendettas.Police detective Charlotte Monroe arrives home from a grueling day of tests devised to ascertain her special skills at reading faces and body language, and finds her husband and daughter deep in conversation in the kitchen with a stranger. He looks vaguely familiar, and when she recognizes him as Number Eight on the FBI's most wanted list, she slips into her home office to alert the authorities. While she is on the phone, the man, Jacob Bright Sky Panther, abruptly leaves, and Charlotte soon discovers that her teenaged daughter Gracey has gone missing. The SWAT team is called, the chase is on, and Hall's singular skill at interweaving a dense, complicated plot into a very readable thriller has the reader turning pages.
Gracey, who suffers from schizophrenia, is a particularly interesting character whose separation from family and medications leads her to fantasies in her own delusional world. She is at great risk as her parents frantically try to find her trail. Hall is masterful at letting us into Gracey's Steven Spielberg version of life, which adds pathos and occasional humor to the extreme danger in which she finds herself.
This fast-paced literary thriller fuses historical fact, political intrigue, corruption and family feuds with deep characterizations of a troubled family facing inner terrors of their own. Charlotte's innate ability to read facial expressions could and should lead to a fascinating new series based on her character.
Hall has produced thirteen other novels, several of them featuring a Key West beach bum troubleshooter named Thorn, which have been widely received and critically acclaimed. For fans of South Florida mystery thrillers, James W. Hall is perhaps more literary than some of his famous cohorts, like Laurence Shames, Carl Hiaasen, and Randy Wayne White. FORESTS OF THE NIGHT delivers not only as a thriller but also as a page-turner with smarts.
Discovery of another exceptional mystery writer is always exciting, if costly. James W. Hall has been added to my must-read list.
--- Reviewed by Roz Shea
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
