Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't Put It Down!!!!
Review: This review will be short!!!! Hall kept me enthralled from Page 1 to Finish. I couldn't put the book down and stayed up all night to read it!
Rating: 
Summary: Play Misty in Margaritaville
Review: To suggest that Hall's 'Rough Draft' is in a class with Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen is like comparing Mickey Mouse to Ernest Hemingway. None of the characters seem real, and a few would be better suited to a science fiction story. Hal the antisocial homicidal maniac with almost supernatural powers to blend in and kill with his bare hands and Stevie the 11-year-old genius who can manipulate the FBI's computer system have no roots in reality.To please an egomaniacal senator whose daughter Hal killed, super ambitious FBI agent Helen Shane sets up an elaborate scam to trap Hal using heroine Hannah Keller as bait. The detestable Shane misses obvious opportunities to nail Hal while Hannah unrealistically gets sucked into the plan endangering her fragile son Randall along the way. Agent Frank Sheffield, torn between Shane's directives and his feelings for Hannah, has enough backbone to challenge Helen and the senator but will straight out lie to Hannah when she starts to figure things out. On top of an incredulous plot, Hall also builds in awkward gimmicks like the fact that Hannah's name and Frank's kayak are palindromes, which ties to the coded messages that Hannah's been getting. When the character named Misty hijacked the boat named Margaritaville, it seemed an apt metaphor for the lack of symmetry to this story.
Rating: 
Summary: Murder In Miami
Review: When Miami police officer Hannah Keller arrives at her parents' house to pick up her 11-year-old son, she finds both parents murdered and her son deeply traumatised. It looks as though the person responsible is J.J. Fielding, an embezzler on the run after ripping off a drug cartel to the tune of around $400 million. From here things start to get complicated. On Fielding's trail is a hired killer, Hal, who also happens to be a homicidal maniac with a particularly gruesome (and just a little unbelievable) method of murdering his victims. And on his trail is the FBI who decides to use Hannah as bait to lure and capture Hal. Hal, the inevitable psychopathic assassin, is provided as yet another seemingly unstoppable cold-blooded killer who, you just know, will eventually confront Hannah. Apart from a few scenes that stretched the bounds of belief just a little too far for my liking, the book was very entertaining. Once again James Hall has produced a fast-paced book that urges you to keep reading as the climax is brought to its peak.
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