Body Language Hall, James W.

A forensic photographer for the Miami police, Alexandra Rafferty finds her life spinning out of control as a series of gruesome rape/murders forces her to confront a violent event from her own past and sends her on the run from her husband, his enemies, and a killer. 150,000 first printing. Tour.

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.

Hall is back in top form after stretching the limits of his series featuring Travis McGee-like investigator Thorn (e.g., Gone Wild, LJ 2/15/97). Here the protagonist is a woman, Alexandra Rafferty, a forensic photographer for the Miami police department. Besieged by childhood memories that include rape and murder, Alex must confront present-day dangers as she deals with a serial-killer case, a criminal-obsessed husband, a potential lover (or is he a murderer?), and her Alzheimer's-afflicted, former-Miami cop father. The gruesome series of murders and other assorted violence is leavened by multiple story lines that converge seamlessly and a host of fascinating characters, not least among them Alex. A high-priority purchase for thriller fans.
-?Francine Fialkoff, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

When Hall's first mystery, Under Cover of Daylight, appeared in 1987, the idea of Florida as a kind of neon Armageddon was the genre's hot new theme. Now, with Hall, Carl Hiaasen, and numerous others diligently working the soil, it's threatening to become a cliche . More than any of his Floridian peers, Hall has avoided repetition; his hermit-sleuth Thorn has appeared in most of his books, but the focus has jumped from environmental issues to struggles with personal demons. Changing gears even more dramatically, Hall now introduces a new series character, Miami forensic photographer Alexandra Rafferty, whose demons are both internal and external. Attempting to avoid a dark secret in her past (for once, it isn't incest), Rafferty loses herself in the distanced objectivity of photographing crime scenes ("Eyes neutral. No personality, no throb of self"). The throbbing begins, however, when Alex realizes that the serial killer called the Bleeder is positioning his victims' bodies to spell her name. Meanwhile, Alex's disaffected husband, a Brinks armored-car driver, attempts to combine chaos theory with crime in the hopes of becoming what he calls the "first post-Einstein robber." Alex lands in the middle of the resulting chaos, and with her Alzheimer's-suffering Dad in tow, discovers she can run but she can't hide. Hall effectively combines Ridley Pearson^-like suspense and forensic detail with a near-flawless grasp of character; his Florida loonies are as loony as Hiaasen's, but they go well beyond caricature: loonies with heart. Only a too-pat romantic subplot and a slightly too happy ending keep this thriller from perfection. Bill Ott