Blackwater Sound
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Compelling action and suspense in the Florida Keys and Bahamas – in the atmospheric new thriller from a writer acclaimed by Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly and Robert Crais.
The Braswells had everything: money, looks and power. But when their eldest son, the family’s shining light, was killed in a freak fishing accident, he took with him a dark secret. Ten years later, in the steamy shallows off the Florida coast, an airliner crashes, killing all aboard. Helping pull corpses from the water, Thorn finds himself drawn into a bizarre conspiracy: someone has developed a high-tech weapon capable of destroying electrical systems in a powerful flash. How are the secretive Braswells and their family-owned company involved? And what does it have to do with the family’s obsessive hunt for the great marlin that killed their golden boy?
Featuring two of his most popular characters, police photographer Alexandra Rafferty and reluctant investigator Thorn, BLACKWATER SOUND is James Hall’s finest thriller yet. Loaded with action and suspense, spiced with humour and featuring some of his most unforgettable villains, it bristles with all the heat and tension of a tropical Florida summer.
Reviews
‘James Hall has been one of my favourite crime writers for a long time. He’s great. This is a bodacious novel: cool and violent, but with an energy that’s hard to resist. Top of the class.’ Mark Timlin, Independent on Sunday
‘James Hall really pulls it all together in Blackwater Sound. If violence can be poetic, Hall has the lyric voice for it. Truly haunting.’ New York Times Book Review
‘James Hall, the king of Florida noir, delivers across the board with Blackwater Sound. Chock-full of vivid characters, startlingly explosive moments of ultra-violence and seamlessly elegiac prose’ DENNIS LEHANE
‘Hall has always blazed a unique path through the killing fields of crime fiction. Blackwater Sound is another original and his best yet. With beautiful prose and a heavily muscled story, it moves with the grandeur and unpredictability of a hooked marlin’ MICHAEL CONNELLY
‘A gorgeous and compelling novel about the merciless predators both in and above the waters of south Florida’ ROBERT CRAIS
About the author
For the last 28 years, James Hall has taught literature and creative writing at Florida International University. His acclaimed novels include Red Sky at Night, Under Cover of Daylight, Body Language and Rough Draft.
‘James Hall is the master of suspense… his writing runs as clear and fast as the Gulf Stream waters.’ New York Times Book Review
‘James Hall is the master.’
JAMES ELLROY
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hall's dangerous bone-fishing iconoclast Thorn (Under Cover of Daylight, etc.) and gorgeous police photographer Alexandra Rafferty (Body Language) join forces in a thriller that should swell the author's ranks of admirers. From dramatic beginning to chilling ending, Hall's never been better. When a passenger plane crash-lands near Thorn's boat in the Florida coastal waters, Thorn finds himself thrust into a rescue operation that leads him deeper and deeper into the lunatic world of the Braswell family. The Braswell children boy genius Andy, psychopathic Johnny and dangerously beautiful Morgan make an impressively deadly combination. When circumstances lead Alexandra's wandering and forgetful father, Lawton Collins, into Thorn's path and into the clutches of the Braswells, Thorn and Alexandra become uneasy allies. There's much more at stake than the rescue of one endearing old man with a confused mind the Braswells' evil plans to market a terrifying device promises a reign of terror of awesome proportions. But all that is secondary to Hall's celebration of human and animal determination and grit: Thorn's principled effort to rescue Lawton and a great blue marlin's savage fight to survive. Hall's marlin is a magnificent creature, which the Braswells have hunted for a decade like Ahab after Moby Dick. Hall the poet and Hall the novelist have never been more beautifully melded than they are in this book. The result is suspense, entertainment and high-quality literature.
