Helpful Score: 1
Excellent drama off the Florida Keys...crime and fly fishing...ahh what a way to waste time...
OFF THE CHART by James W. Hall: With this one, you may need a scorecard to keep up with the body count. Thorn has a brief fling with Anne Joy, daughter of a Kentucky pirate wannabe family, who has come to the Keys after her parents are murdered in a drug running dispute. Years later her brother Vic, who has become a land pirate of sorts, decides he wants Thorns land and doesnt respond well to Thorns refusal to sell. Vic then proceeds to kidnap the nine-year-old daughter of Thorn's best friend which eventually leads Thorn into all out war against Vic, whose complement of U.S. helicopters and a small army of cutthroat international pirates are not nearly an even match for an enraged Thorn. In addition to pirates on land and sea, murder and mayhem, there are few juicy sex scenes and beautiful descriptions of Key West flora and fauna. What else could you ask for in a book, except perhaps a sequel fairly soon.
Set in the Florida Keys and climaxing on the coast of Central America. One man's fanatic obsession with his sister's love life leads to dire consequencies for anyone connected to her.
Hall (Blackwater Sound; Buzz Cut; etc.) once again sweeps the sand, surf and swamps of Key Largo, in a hyperdramatic mystery featuring sensitive tough-guy Thorn and his live-in girlfriend, Alexandra Rafferty. Hall sums up the plot nicely at the beginning of the book: "Lunacy and violence. Pirates, pirates, pirates." Thorn's long-ago fling with a beautiful woman named Anne Joy comes back to haunt him years later when Anne's brother, Vic Joy, a modern-day pirate along the Gulf Coast, decides he needs to add Thorn's five-acre property to his ill-gotten business and real estate empire. Anne and Vic are the damaged products of a dirt-poor Kentucky upbringing overseen by a smalltime dope-dealing father and a deranged mother with an all-consuming passion for pirates. Thorn refuses to sell to Vic, triggering a complicated coercion scheme that eventually includes the kidnapping of the nine-year-old daughter of Thorn's best friend. The local body count builds until Thorn is in an all-out battle against the deranged Vic, with a complement of U.S. helicopters and a small army of cutthroat international pirates. Hall's crisp writing, plus the ticking-clock suspense of the child-in-peril subplot and amusing secondary characters like Alexandra's dotty dad make this an exhilarating addition to the series.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW
James W. Hall ranges from Florida Keys to the coast of Central America as Thorn and Alexandra Collins face a brutal killer and kidnapper.
A Doc Thorn mystery: A woman from his past is in trouble, and a local badman wants Thorn's land.
I have not read this book-got it in a box of books at a yard sale.
