Rough Draft

Crime novelist Hannah Keller's obsessive desire to catch her parents' killer leads her to a strange copy of one of her earlier novels, which is filled with strange scrawlings and hieroglyphs that may be clues. 75,000 first printing. Tour.

Veteran thriller master Hall (Body Language) exhibits a new dimension in this latest suspense novel. His intrepid protagonist Thorne conspicuously absent, he again features a female protagonist. Five years ago, beleaguered Miami police detective and single mom Hannah Keller was closing in on J.J. Fielding, a banker/money launderer for the Cali drug cartel. But when agents got close to nabbing Fielding, he disappeared with $463 million in embezzled cash. Meanwhile, Keller and her loving parents were about to celebrate her big break; she'd just sold her first mystery novel for a sizable sum. Her happiness turned to horror when she discovered her mother and her father, a former U.S. Attorney, dead--assassinated gang-style by killers leaving Fielding's "calling card" and a sole witness, Keller's then six-year-old son, Randall. The case has remained unsolved since. Now, Miami FBI agents Frank Sheffield and Helen Shane are out to capture the man who murdered a U.S. senator's daughter. They're sure that the killer is Hal Bonner, hired gun for the Cali cartel, and they decide to use Keller and her son as decoys to capture Bonner. Meanwhile, looking for revenge is Fielding's disturbed daughter, Hooters' employee, Misty. Filled with rage at her father's disappearance, she's determined to kill young Randall. In a creepy plot twist, Keller finds a copy of her first novel marked with scribblings that contain a code, possibly from Fielding himself. Solid suspense builds as the FBI, Misty and Hal chase Keller in choppers, cars and UPS vans. An expert creator of grotesque villains and fast action, former poet Hall raises the crossbar with his sensitive insights into the human condition. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A freewheeling FBI unit uses a sorrowing crime writer to get at a brutal hired killerin an intricate thriller that never quite hits the Michael Connelly mark. Five years ago, Hannah Keller's parents were murdered, presumably by the embezzler her father had just seen slip through his fingers. But her Miami PD colleagues never bought Hannah's theory that J.J. Fielding was the killer. Now that she's retired to become a successful crime writer, the Feebees figure she'll be the perfect bait to flush out Hal Bonner, the Cali assassin who likes to kill his victims by squeezing the life out of their hearts. If Hal can be persuaded that Hannah's found Fielding and his boodle, he'll come out of hiding to follow her as she follows the trail of false clues the FBI has laid down, beginning with a mysteriously annotated copy of her first novel that seems to point to Fielding's whereabouts. Though the plot is diabolically clever, the Bureau types are all ciphers, and Hannah, struggling alone to raise her young son Randall, who was traumatized by seeing his grandparents' killers, doesn't leave much more of an impression. But the bad guys, as ever with Hall (Body Language, 1998, etc.), are delightfully hissable. Hal, an idiot savant of homicide with the self-awareness of a cinder block (``He could do math. He could read. He wasn't learning disabled'') meets his match in Misty, a sad-eyed stripper who's stalking Hannah for reasons of her own. It's a shame that it's so obvious for so long what's going to happen when they finally come face to face with her, her son, and her son's house pet. More twists than thrills, but connoisseurs of villainy will appreciate the latest additions to the most memorable gallery of criminal grotesques since the glory days of Dick Tracy. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Hall's latest clever thriller will grab new fans and please old ones. Ex-cop Hannah Keller has a successful career writing crime novels. Her teenage son, Randall, witnessed the killing of his grandparents five years ago and still hasn't fully recovered. While waiting in her son's psychiatrist's office, she discovers a copy of her first novel with strange notes and numbers in the margins. Deciphering it reveals what appears to be a direct message to her from the killers of her parents. With the help of a reluctant FBI agent, Hannah decides to play along, but by her own rules. Hall (Body Language) is a master at duping the reader into believing something that inevitably proves to be jaw-droppingly false. A surprising book that should be on all public library shelves.
---Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.