From Amazon.com
Of all the crime writers currently mining Florida for fictional gold, James W. Hall is arguably the best at catching that state's unique topographic heartbeat. In his books about beach bum Thorne (including
Buzz Cut,
Mean High Tide, and
Hard Aground), you can smell the ocean mixed in with the blood. Now Hall is starting a new series, about Miami police photographer Alexandra Rafferty, and readers will probably overlook the nagging feeling of some ingredients from other Florida writers tossed into the mix (Elmore Leonard's gallery of colorful sociopaths, Carl Hiaasen's over-the-top quirkiness) because of dead-on descriptions like this: "Jennifer McDougal's small white cottage at 2709 Leafy Way was wedged between two Coconut Grove mansions. To the west was a massive high-tech structure with severe angles, skylights, buttresses, heavy concrete archways, and dozens of columns holding up a grape trellis. A neon flamingo was lit up beside the massive front doors and neon numerals flickered beneath it." Alexandra is a fascinating character, wounded by a childhood rape. Very protective of her ex-policeman father who saved her then and has now slipped into senility, she deliberately keeps her talents and emotions in check. Her husband (one of those lovable Leonard lunatics) is an armored-car driver secretly planning the crime of the century, and the rest of the plot involves the search for a killer of young women who leaves his victims in unusual postures.
--Dick Adler
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Following last year's downcast Red Sky at Night, which left beachcomber-hero Thorn in a wheelchair, Hall bounces back with a new protagonist, Alexandra Rafferty, an appealing fourth-degree blackbelt, crime-scene photographer and all-around Miami PD femme Nikita. Shadowed by 18 years of guilt from the grisly aftermath of her rape at age 11, Alex is the loving caregiver to her father, an ex-cop befuddled by senility. Caught up in a series of serial killings of young women whose bodies are left in bizarre postures, Alex is unaware that her cretinoid husband, Stan, an armored car driver, is planning the perfect robbery. All hell breaks loose when a sexy pool-cleaner/ burglar (who keeps a pet cockroach in her pocket) chances on the scene and sees Stan's airhead mistress make off with two bags worth a cool million. When Alex's pixilated dad steals back the loot, most of the major elements of this whimsical action-packed plot are in place. The ensuing 600-mile chase takes Alex and dad to Seaside, the well-known planned community on the sugary beaches of the Florida panhandle. Forgiving the distracting, superfluous plot threads, Hall fans will be more than reimbursed by his poetic imagery in the landscapes and love scenes. Alex is a heroine with enough endearing attributes to sustain yet another long-running character series. $200,000 ad/promo; audio to Brilliance; author tour. Agent, Richard Pine; editor, Jenifer Weis. (Sept.) FYI: Seaside, Fla., was the location for the new Jim Carrey film, The Truman Show.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
