Rating: 
Summary: Praise for James Hall's BODY LANGUAGE
Review: "BODY LANGUAGE seduces you, then it grabs you, and it never lets you go. This is a first-rate thriller by a masterful writer." --James Patterson"BODY LANGUAGE is James Hall showing all his best stuff. Complex and edgy, engrossing and masterful. I've been reading and learning from Hall for a long time but this book's a cut above the rest. It's his very best." --Michael Connelly "Alexandra Rafferty is a fabulous addition to the ranks of law enforcement. She is smart, competent, the consummate professional, and her job as a Miami P.D. photographic specialist places her at the heart of the crime scene, with a cold eye for detail and a passionate commitment to justice." --Sue Grafton "BODY LANGUAGE is a sizzling tale of sex, blood, and obsession. James Hall just gets better and better." --Stephen Coonts
Rating: 
Summary: Zany South Florida mystery that is one of the best
Review: Forensic photographer Alexandra Rafferty buries herself in her gruesome work for the Miami police department as a means of forgetting the time she was raped as an eleven-year old. Recently, her father, a retired cop and the only person besides his daughter and the culprit who knows about that rape, is becoming forgetful due to Alzheimer's. Her spouse, a Brinks driver, is an idiot who robs an armored car. As her personal life spins out of orbit, her professional life becomes more intense when a serial rapist-murderer takes front and center stage in Southern Florida. Before Alexandra realizes what is happening, she is on the lam with her father and the loot he stole from her spouse. Her husband, other crooks, and a vicious killer give chase as Alexandra heads to Seaside. Anyone of them is willing to eliminate Alexandra as a threat. BODY LANGUAGE is as crazy as a tale gets without losing its sense of direction (from Miami north to the Panhandle). James W. Hall shows why he is one of the leading lights of the zany Southern Florida mysteries with a frenzied, yet exciting and detailed tale. The characters clearly make the show as all are fully motivated and a bit off-centered. Especially of note is three of the prime men in Alexandra's life: her father (his comments are dark comic relief), her spouse (using chaos theory to pull off his heist), and the killer (as bloody a rapist as one will read about). Mr. Hall continues to be one of the best mystery writers of non-stop thrillers. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: A Thriller With Plenty Of Twists And Turns
Review: A fast moving thriller with plenty of twists and turns. Hall's prose is as good as ever, but I did get a little tired of the many descriptions of wearing apparel. The new characters were an interesting mix. Lawton Collins is a fresh, original, and at times very funny character. He pretty much steals the show. I enjoyed this new direction for Hall, but hope that Thorn hasn't been retired.
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Summary: A nice break from Thorn
Review: A very quick read. It felt more like a James Patterson novel than his usual stuff, which was just as well as his Thorn novels are getting a little old. Hall seems to be enjoying writing about a different protaganist than Thorn, for once. I kept forgetting that the story was taking place in Florida. The story was very compelling although the ending was a little disappointing. Until then the mystery kept me going (although I did figure out what the killer's message meant before Alexandra did). Highly reccommended.
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Summary: A Bit Of Everything
Review: Alexandra Rafferty overcomes a shocking childhood incident before growing up to become a forensic photographer. Although appearing to have put her past behind her, she still lives with it, affecting her marriage to Stan, an armoured truck driver who thinks he has devised the perfect crime, a plan in which he would rob his own truck, after which he and his girlfriend would leave Miami to live on the proceeds. Inevitably, Stan's perfect crime isn't so perfect after all, having attracted the attention of some other life-long and low-life criminals who can see an easy profit for the taking. Somehow, the money falls into Alexandra's hands and she suddenly finds herself on the run from her husband, the opportunistic criminals and, just to add a nifty twist, a serial killer. With all of these people chasing the same person, their paths are bound to cross at some point with unpredictable results. There are all sorts of interesting and strange characters making up the book: with Emma, the young pool cleaner who keeps a pet cockroach on a string leash in her pocket; and Lawton, Alexandra's father, an ex-policeman who is slowly losing his memory. He is a tragic figure who still has a very important part to play in the story's outcome. This is a brisk thriller joining together a desperate chase across Florida with the tension and terror of not knowing when or where the serial killer will strike next.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: An awesome suspense thriller which kept me turing the pages. This was definitely one of the best books I've read this year.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: An awesome suspense thriller which kept me turing the pages. This was definitely one of the best books I've read this year.
Rating:
Summary: Body Language, scary and emotionally charged
Review: As I was writing Body Language, I was never sure who thekiller was until the final scene. I know some writers don't starttheir novels until they've mapped out the entire story. But I would find that pretty tedious. My approach is to discover along with the reader (or maybe one half-step ahead) what the story is about. The easiest and most rewarding part of the novel to write was the relationship between Alexandra and her father, Lawton Collins. Lawton's memory is fading fast (a condition I've had a very small glimpse of in my own life), and in his childlike innocence he can be both wise and foolish as well as put himself and his daughter at great risk. In several scenes, Lawton scared me to death. I was never sure if he was going to survive the novel or not. I also had a lot of fun with Stan, Alexandra's husband, who has become obsessed with criminals and the history of crime and fancies himself a legendary criminal in the making. I've always liked wild card characters. Minor characters who come into the story from odd angles and change the whole direction of things unexpectedly. There are a couple of those in Body Language. My favorite is a young woman named Emma who keeps a pet roach in her pocket and a mess of guns in her trunk. The novel moves between Miami and Seaside, Florida, a pretty little town up in the Panhandle of Florida. It's a pastel paradise where nothing bad could possibly happen. Until my characters show up. I've centered five of my previous novels around a reclusive fisherman named Thorn. I decided to give Thorn a little rest for a book or two. I've been beating him up pretty badly lately. And working with Alexandra Rafferty was something of a relief. Her job as a forensic photographer for Miami police department gave me a whole new area to research, and it makes her character much more grounded in the world of crime and danger than any character I've ever created before. I'm considering using her in the future. I find that I already miss her and Lawton, their funny, sad, scary moments together. The bad guy in this novel also spiked my blood pressure whenever he made an appearance. He's so utterly normal, so completely charming on the face of things that you'd never suspect what he's planning to do. It was uncomfortable to be inside this guy's head, but at the same time it was exhilerating. I take great pleasure in creating bad guys who scare the hell out of me. It sounds odd, I know, but unless the evil is truly evil in these books, they don't pack the wallop they should. I know the writing is going well when in the middle of a scene with my bad guy, I have to get up from the computer and walk around to relieve the tension. I did a lot of walking in Body Language.
Rating: 
Summary: Nowhere near up to Hall's standard
Review: Ever since I picked up a dog-eared copy of Squall Line from my local library I have been hooked on James Hall's sometimes poetic, always inspired novels. But Body Language just can't cut it. A damaged lead character - as per for Hall - who finds a kind of redemption at the end is all well and good. However, the need for love and it's final release is neither wonderfully climactic nor - despite the purple prose - all that smouldering. Instead the love interest is a not particularly interesting nor well-drawn character, and his presence allows for an end that is a little too pat, a little too easy. Plotwise it really is straight out murder mystery via Hollywood - only two characters unaccounted for to suspect, and one she falls for. Not seen that one before... And four characters who are built up over the novel are dispensed with in such a cursory manner as to even make the excuse that Hall is showing us the random brutality of violence a too easy a way out. It just comes across as lazy writing. And that is the crux of my problems with this book. Once Hall wrote like the poet he is - a little Lee Burke with a left of centre Florida outlook. Here the language is throwaway and forced and the characters, on the whole, simplistic. And for someone who writes a crazy plot about strange people - well, why the vicious dig at Hiaasen? (At least that is how it appears. One character is reading a column in the Miami Herald from a hotshot star columnist who 'discovered sarcasm in grade 5' and is having a go at Florida real estate developers. Sounds like Carl to me, and Hall has a sustained go at him.) Too many novelists can't sustain their invention, but I can only hope I see Hall back on form by his next work.
Rating:
Summary: Body Language
Review: Hall has created a fast paced thriller. The exchanges between the father and the daughter are both comical and tragic at the same time. It touches on the frustration of the elderly with memory loss and the patience the child must apply. It does this while moving you along a path of mystery. This book keeps you guessing until the very end.
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