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Summary
Summary
The Braswell family had everything people would kill for: money, looks, power. But their eldest son, the family's shining light, died in a bizarre fishing accident. And when he disappeared-hauled into the depths by the giant marlin he had been fighting-he took with him a secret so corrupt that it could destroy the Braswells.Ten years later, a huge airliner crashes in the steamy shallows off the Florida coast, killing all aboard. Helping pull bodies 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. The terrorist potential is huge. How are the secretive Braswells and their family-owned company, MicroDyne, involved? And what does it have to do with the family's obsessive hunt for the great marlin that killed their golden boy?With the Braswells, James W. Hall introduces one of the most evil and dysfunctional families in the history of fiction. And, along with Thorn, he brings back favorite characters from his earlier books, including Alexandra Rafferty and her father, Lawton Collins, a retired and increasingly dotty former police investigator whose methods of investigation result in his kidnapping. A story that bristles with all the heat and tension of a tropical Florida summer, Blackwater Sound is destined to rank among the greatest suspense thrillers of the new decade.
Author Notes
James W. Hall was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. After graduating from Eckerd College in Florida and earning additional degrees from John Hopkins University and the University of Utah, He began to write poetry. Among his published books of poetry are The Lady from the Dark Green Hills, The Mating Reflex, and False Statements.
Following his successful 20-year career as a poet, he decided it was time to switch gears and try his hand at writing fictional crime novels. He published his first novel, Under Cover of Daylight, in 1987. Since then he has written over 15 novels including the Thorn Mysteries series, Bones of Coral, Hard Aground, Rough Draft, and Forests of the Night. Several of his novels have been optioned for film and he has written screenplays for two of those projects. He is a professor of literature and writing at Florida International University.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (Jan. 7) Forecast: Backed by a national author tour and ad campaign, with pre-pub raves from Dennis Lehane, James Lee Burke, Robert Crais, Scott Turow and Michael Connelly, this crime novel seems destined for bestsellerdom. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Guardian Review
The two ends of American literature - college set text and airport superseller - are linked by the significance in both of big- fish books. Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) and Peter Benchley's Jaws (1974) are wholly different in prose style, but both give mythic weight to the fisherman's legend of the one that can't be allowed to get away. So James Hall, a university professor and poet who also writes thrillers, may be attempting to unify the two by setting his latest book around an epic piscatorial quest: in this case for a giant marlin which has drowned the scion of a prominent Florida family as he tried to hook it. This is Hall's 12th novel, but he has so far been one of those writers who have more luck with critics buying the idea than with readers buying the books. Blackwater Sound has jacket hallelujahs from no fewer than nine big-name crime novelists (Leonard, Hiaasen, Turow, Ellroy, Connelly, Koontz, Cussler, Patterson and Crais), which can be taken as a sign that the publishers hope with this book to turn a writers' writer into a readers' one as well. Such attempts are always helped if the book chosen for special promotion feels bigger than its predecessors, so it is smart of Hall to summon echoes of Melville and Benchley and that central American myth. This is also, though, the age of the multi-level techno- thriller, and so Blackwater Sound is interested, metaphorically, in bigger fish. The Braswells, the rich Floridians whose heir was dragged down by the marlin, are watching from their boat when a passenger jet crashes into the sea stretch of the title after losing all electrical power. A fisherman and bait salesman called Thorn - the kind of rugged, squinty loner who is as vital a prop in such novels as guns and enigmatic women - becomes a local hero when he drags survivors from the flaming waves, and the hero of the novel when, moving between Florida and the Bahamas, he begins to connect the plane's systems failure with efforts at the mysterious Braswell family business to develop a H ERF (High Energy Radio Frequency) gun, a long-time military dream of a device which will create a Bermuda triangle to take down enemy planes. Thriller-writers borrow from the genre's proven stock as carefully as racehorse-breeders, and Blackwater Sound is by The Firm out of Jaws - although, in combining deep-sea lore with paranoid conspiracy, Hall creates something wholly his own. A more problematic comparison is with the two great thriller monoliths already plonked down on the Florida coastline: Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard. Hall never equals Leonard's sound-recordist's ear for American speech. He most resembles another devotee of the Florida Keys, Ernest Hemingway, in that he is best at machismo and weather. The writer is as alert as a film director to the precise light and shadows in every scene, and specifies the scent not only of each flower and breeze but also of the hero's girlfriend's vagina. This nose-twitching receptivity presumably comes from Hall's interests in fishing and poetry, and he is at his most impressive as a narrative weatherman. The jacket tells us that Hall teaches creative writing at Florida International University, and we can assume that a crucial early seminar involves the lesson that "it" and "he" are for wimps. Hall habitually takes a saw to the start of his sentences. Here is a character being established: "Seventy-two and still commanded respect. Didn't matter he was silver-haired with a short stocky build. Didn't matter he dressed like a dork." Though I'm well read in other examples of Florida noir, this is only my second Hall. It certainly doesn't sustain his supporters' frequent claim that he is Hiaasen and Leonard for grown-ups. The super-weapon plot feels Bond-ish, and the author seems to find Florida about as funny as Al Gore does. Even Thorn - interestingly, a murderer and outcast in the previous outing - has the feel of a default hunk. The clue to what has happened lies in those nine cover come-ons from bestselling authors and the publicity push behind this book. In attempting to widen his audience, Hall seems to have broadened his effects. Mark Lawson's novel, Going Out Live , is published by Picador. To order Blackwater Sound for pounds 8.99 plus p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 066 7979. Caption: article-lawson.1 The Braswells, the rich Floridians whose heir was dragged down by the marlin, are watching from their boat when a passenger jet crashes into the sea stretch of the title after losing all electrical power. A fisherman and bait salesman called Thorn - the kind of rugged, squinty loner who is as vital a prop in such novels as guns and enigmatic women - becomes a local hero when he drags survivors from the flaming waves, and the hero of the novel when, moving between Florida and the Bahamas, he begins to connect the plane's systems failure with efforts at the mysterious Braswell family business to develop a H ERF (High Energy Radio Frequency) gun, a long-time military dream of a device which will create a Bermuda triangle to take down enemy planes. Thriller-writers borrow from the genre's proven stock as carefully as racehorse-breeders, and Blackwater Sound is by The Firm out of Jaws - although, in combining deep-sea lore with paranoid conspiracy, [James Hall] creates something wholly his own. A more problematic comparison is with the two great thriller monoliths already plonked down on the Florida coastline: Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard. - Mark Lawson.
Kirkus Review
More spirited apocalyptic escapism pitting Thorn, the hero lesser mortals disapprovingly describe as "some kind of amateur vigilante," against a hideously dysfunctional South Florida family. Every since her adored teenaged brother Andy was drowned by a giant marlin and her mother killed herself in grief, Darlene Braswell has been a woman with a mission. Armed with Andy's notes and diagrams, the cold-eyed beauty has taken control of her father's company, MicroDyne-using the technological breakthroughs Andy envisioned to bail the firm out of troubled waters-and of her lumpish kid brother Johnny, whose principal interests are watching old gangster movies and replicating their dialogue and weaponry in real-life situations. Now MicroDyne is on the verge of perfecting a device worthy of James Bond: a High Energy Radio Frequency (HERF) gun that knocks out all electrical circuits in its target area, whether that's a tavern or an airliner. Unfortunately for Darlene, Thorn just happens to be breaking up with his latest lissome lover in a boat directly under the Rio-bound flight Darlene decides to bring down, and Arnold Peretti, the best friend of Darlene's father, has decided to turn evidence of HERF's power over to the press. Johnny can neutralize Arnold, of course, but how can any mere mortal, armed with whatever high-tech wizardry, hope to succeed against the alliance of crime-scene photographer Alexandra Rafferty (Body Language, 1998) and the imperishably virile Thorn (Rough Draft, 2000)? It's true that Thorn will have his work cut out for him getting close to Darlene and the crew of her nefarious yacht ByteMe, but it's not true that he has nothing Darlene and her father want: He can promise access to the monstrous marlin that killed golden-boy Andy. Average for this action-packed series, built for speed rather than reflection, and boasting still another in the most grotesque gallery of villains since the glory days of Dick Tracy. Author tour
Library Journal Review
The most recent of Hall's thrillers, featuring the man known only as Thorn, lives up to the series' reputation. At the scene of an airline crash, Thorn becomes entangled in the mystery of its connection to the successful but dysfunctional Braswell family, and the listener's attention is captured immediately. An assignment brings police photographer Alexandra Rafferty into the widening net along with her Alzheimer's-suffering father, Lawton. Ten years ago a trophy-sized blue marlin took genius Andy Braswell to the water's depths along with a transmitter that patriarch A J, daughter Morgan, and psychopathic Johnny tune in to annually. In the rush to find one of Andy's inventions, a HURF weapon explodes. Dick Hill's impressive arsenal of vocal characterizations completes this highly recommended program. Sandy Glover, West Linn P.L., OR (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.