Magic City: A Novel [Hardcover]

Magic City is significant not only for James W. Hall's seductive storytelling, but also because it represents a milestone of sorts, marking Hall's twentieth year as a novelist. Yes, fans, it's been twenty years since the superlative Under Cover of Daylight, which, by the way, featured the same protagonist as Magic City, the enigmatic Thorn. Oh how time flies when you're having fun...

This time out, the mayhem is triggered by a forty-year old photograph, a picture of then Mayor of Miami Beach Stanton King and his guests in the audience of the 1964 prizefight between Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston. Its reappearance at a retrospective of the photographer's work sends certain parties into a panic, causing them to trigger a search for all extant copies. Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for action/thriller fans, one of those copies belongs to the father of Thorn's paramour Alexandra, retired cop Lawton Collins. Pulled into the matter by circumstance, Thorn meets lethal force with equally lethally force in an attempt to protect his loved ones.

Fast paced, harrowing, and thoroughly compelling, Hall's fourteenth novel proves once again that Miami Beach is still a fertile breeding ground for thrillers, as the author holds a mirror up to the last forty years of the city's history, even as he puts his series character Thorn through some very demanding paces. Hall's regular readers and fans of writers as diverse as John D. MacDonald, Carl Hiaasen, Randy Wayne White, James O. Born and Tim Dorsey will no doubt enjoy this offering.

On February 25, 1964, Cassius Clay defeated Sonny Liston. In Miami, Florida, a 12-year-old boy named Manuel Ricardo Morales, known as Snake, listens excitedly to the radio transmission of the fight. Originally from Cuba, Snake and his family came to Miami to elude the Fidel Castro regime. On this night, most of the members of the Morales family are killed, as Snake sees who he believes to be Castro's hit men enter his home and leave him an orphan. Although he fights back valiantly --- like his hero, Cassius Clay --- Snake also loses his beloved girlfriend, Carmen, to these thugs.

A photograph of the fight becomes critical to the plot from this point forward --- because sitting in row three of that picture is the man responsible for these horrific murders. A now-grown-up Snake discovers that Lawton Collins is in possession of a copy of the photograph and goes to Lawton's house to retrieve it. There, he and his friend find Thorn Truman, our protagonist, who is engaged to Alexandria Collins. "He would find the photo, decipher its meaning, and then do what was necessary, accomplishing each step with dispassionate focus. As Cassius had fought. Aloof, above the fray, deliberate, calculated, and merciless."

Lawton Collins is a terrific character. A retired cop, with a great sense of humor and irony, he is not a fan of Thorn dating his daughter. "It's about time she got back," Lawton said. "Leaving her old man in the hands of an unreliable doofus, what kind of daughter would do that to her defenseless old dad."

As a highly valued CIA operative, Pauline Caufield's role in maintaining a high-profile manufacturing executive cover provides readers with a second plot. The two storylines come together with the significance of the Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston photo.

What is particularly interesting about MAGIC CITY is the weaving and depth of the plot lines. Just when you think that James W. Hall has written a commonplace novel, he smacks you with another piece of the puzzle. This incredibly well-crafted story has all the elements to surprise, captivate and reassure the reader that this is a book worth reading.

Thorn Truman is hesitant to leave his home in the Florida Keys for his visit to Alexandria in Miami. He will soon see that he has good reason to be reluctant, as his trip to Miami will be nothing but ordinary. When the federal government, the CIA, Cuban rebels and the Catholic Church are involved, action reigns. Who is exonerated, who is blamed, and who sinks back into the woodwork? Read MAGIC CITY and find out for yourself.

--- Reviewed by Marge Fletcher

This may be a decent detective read, but honestly, it's hard to fight through to the substance in audio format. The Publisher's Weekly review above has it right-on; the narrators voice is totally unsuited for the genre, but that's only part of it -- he doesn't do ethnic or female voices well, and mispronounces Meyer Lansky's name as "Mayer" Lansky throughout. This gets especially dicey when he mentions "Mayer" and Miami's MAYOR in the same sentence, which happens frequently. At one point the narrator even mixes his attempts at a woman's voice with a male's during rapid back-and-forth dialogue -- yikes! To top that off, the reader's default accent -- whatever it is -- is sadly reminiscent of the narrator voice in Edward Wood's "Plan 9 from outer space."

This is my first Hall novel, and he's no James Lee Burke; even under the bad narration there's too much overwriting, too much explanation about feelings or thoughts we can supply for ourselves. The protagonist, Thorn, is another vagrant unarmed bad-a** with no address like Jack Reacher in the Lee Child novels -- what is the rationale for such crime solvers? Why not give them a little .22 to carry? Anyway -- I have a long commute and listen to a lot of these kinds of novels, and would like to give the author another chance... I believe Will Patton has narrated one of Hall's novels on CD -- now, THAT would be the ticket!

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