Rating: 
Summary: Mediocrity cruises the Gulf Stream...
Review: It's about time that Florida readers had a good tale out of that great chain of islands, the Keys. Unfortunately, this latest effort by James W. Hall is not it. Blackwater Sound does not even come close to capturing the atmosphere or place of this part of the world. The characters, with one minor exception, are flat and uninteresting. The protagonist with one name, Thorn, generates little emotional response from the reader.Oh, the tired old formula boy meets girl, girl despises boy, boy and girl finally have steamy sex as girl realizes that boy is indeed a desirable find; that cliche is alive and well here. We have the marlin in the Gulf Stream, ala Mr. Hemingway. Only Mr. Hemingway did it first and much, much better. Hall also seems to want to give his marlin some of the qualities of the white whale, Moby Dick. Here again, apologies may be due to Melville. As I read this book, I kept hoping for something more. Some chapters began in an interesting manner, only to fall apart as I read on, as though the author had more pressing matters elsewhere and had to hurry along. The plot line is thin stuff, and certain events are contrived and unrealistic. With good reading time so valuable, I am sorry that I wasted any on this poorly crafted novel. A far better idea would have been to re-read To Have and Have Not.
Rating:
Summary: Shame on You James W. Hall
Review: James did a disservice to his readers, to Thorn and to himself. I wish he had killed Thorn off instead of putting in such a pathetic effort. Not at all up to James W. Hall standards. Could the billfish segments have been more poorly researched?
Rating: 
Summary: Blackwater Sound
Review: James Hall is one of the most accomplished writers I have had the pleasure to come accross. I was completely immersed in the book from the first page. His writing is something truly special - suspenseful and hauntingly beautiful at the same time. This is a book that should appeal to both lovers of high-suspence action and lovers of thoughtful literature.
Rating: 
Summary: A Quiet Man
Review: Long ago I read a Thorn story and promptly forgot the title. Every time I’d read a mystery with a Florida setting, I thought of Thorn. I’d question mystery experts about a guy who lives on the Keys, a real outsider who doesn’t want any ties and cares not about material things. Recently, I saw a message on the Amazon Discussion Board about “Blackwater Sound,” immediately made the connection, and ordered the book. I was not disappointed.The haunting prologue described young Andy Braswell who, attempting to attach an electronic device on a Moby Dick sized marlin, was dragged and lost at sea. Ten years later, his mother has committed suicide, his father is still obsessed with catching the marlin, and his brother and sister are emotional wrecks. The story proper opens with a horrendous crash of a commercial airliner into Blackwater Sound off Key Largo, FL. Thorn is part of the rescue operation. The crash, the sounds and the aftermath, are skillfully and almost poetically rendered by the author. I thought I had read the ultimate in crash descriptions in Andrew Klavan’s “Hunting Down Amanda,” but Mr. Hall is in a class by himself. The story is well paced and the characterizations are excellent. These are stand-alone type people. After you have read this book, you will surely agree that dysfunctional families are each different unto themselves. The technology is a little weak, but is more than made up for by the stirring battles between man and marlin. Mr. Hall’s expertise is in fishing not gadgets. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Another Top-Notch Thriller From Mr. Hall.
Review: Man, I like this guy! Finished _Blackwater Sound_ last night and it's another winner. I always feel like I'm doing him a bit of a disservice because I get so into the books I don't want to set them down, and I tend to read faster and faster. I know I'm not giving all the lyrical descriptions of the setting, etc. (on a par with those of James Lee Burke), the attention they deserve. And now I have to wait another two(?) years for the next one. In this book, Hall brings together Thorn, his series character, with Alexandra Collins, the crime scene photographer he introduced in _Body Language_. Thorn is out on his boat one night when he witnesses the crash of a jetliner, which narrowly misses him as it makes a water landing. First on the scene, he swoops in to rescue survivors and spots another boat nearby, with a trio of suspicious-looking folks just standing by, not doing much to help. Later, onshore, he's threatened with a monster knife by a big, baby-faced kid, Johnny Braswell, one of the three. This draws him into a complex mystery involving a HERF gun, capable of knocking out the electronic systems of jets, cars, banks, etc., and the Braswell family, who are some of the scariest villains Hall's created yet (and if you've read his work, you know that's something). Since Alexandra's father, Lawton, who suffers from Alzheimer's, is pulled into the mix, when he's kidnapped by the Braswells, she gets involved and it isn't long before she runs into Thorn and his friend Sugarman. There's the usual mix of darkly humorous dialogue, over the top violence, truly evil bad guys, and the virtuous, moral influence of Thorn. Though he isn't really a detective, he does fulfill the same role, relying on his own personal code of ethics to see things through. And Hall is great at describing settings, too. Whenever I read one of these books, the first thing I want to do is book a fishing
vacation to South Florida. Very highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!!
Review: Pure pleasure. Hall loves his Florida. He takes the time to lovingly, lyrically describe it, without for a moment detracting from the story's pacing. It's one hell of an exciting story with a couple of big laughs thrown in for good measure. Having a senior citizen with dementia as one of the heroes is a fresh, bold move. The dangerous elements of the plot seem eerily close to today's hedlines, though the book was written months before 9-11. I loved the environmental commentary, especially at the beginning of the book. Required reading for fans of the planet. This book has such a tropical atmosphere that I have a psychic sun-burn. KUDOS!
Rating:
Summary: 4 1/2 stars
Review: See storyline above. James W. Hall writes a great thriller and I also think this is one of his best. From it's dramatic opening to its satisfying conclusion, 'Blackwater Sound' paints a riveting picture of southern Florida. Thorn, a laid back individual that seems to attract trouble like a magnet attracts steel, returns in another very satisfying novel of adventure. Halls dialogue and narrative paint a vivid picture. The locales of Southern Florida along with the characters, makes this a very 'hard to put down' book. Highly recommended
Rating:
Summary: Truly no Carl Hiaasen this
Review: The most noteworthy part of this otherwise forgettable book is the half dozen quotes on the back of the hard cover edition I read. Each is an author who's output I follow and I usually enjoy reading. This is a first. Normally this many blurbs include some by authors I don't know or don't like. So this, for me is a special case and deserves comment.
Now I don't want to go off on a rant here, but I am not a callow moron. Countless times I finish an inferior book and am left to speculate darkly what book industry machinations ordained that Elmore Leonard or Michael Connelly blurbs shall be associated with it. Long ago I stopped believing it was the benign kindness of these paragons, who in their wisdom detected some promise in the work that completely escaped me. Because often I can't believe they'd actually hold still to read the thing. My social life became pretty much a dud since I overheard a friend's wife on the phone tell someone, He had to go back to school, at his age, while scuffling to the john. Surely only an unemployed smuck like me, unable to buy books under present circumstances winds up on holiday break with the library closed and has nothing better to do with his afternoon than finish a substandard piece of genre fiction. What excuse could Michael Connelly possibly have?
So because of its list of, for me, impeccable blurbs this case leaves me not merely wondering once again, What gives? but offended. Unlike the product of these favorites, the work at hand is lifeless and formulaic. It contains no humor, twisted or otherwise. No anger, vicious or righteous. Its author has no talent for character. Instead of showing us character's with behavior and dialogue he tells us how, for instance the main character's (I wince typing Thorn) two lovers are different. The villain(ess) is especially mechanical and bloodless which I find unusual. Often a cleverly wrought villain strikes me as the only apparent reason an otherwise undistinguished piece of genre fiction gets published. And the ploy of putting dialogue from gangster movies into the mouth of one of the bad guys to mark him wasn't just stupid because it's hackneyed; it glaringly illuminated the flatness of the rest of the dialogue. The only quality this author has is the stamina to grind his dreary harebrained plot and stock characters out to completion. But it's merely a fact that there's a lot of junk genre fiction out there, some worse than this. What I object to is its talented producers' collusion in hoodwinking their fans by promoting an example of it like this one, rather than using their blurbs to help us sift out the truly entertaining.
Rating: 
Summary: Modest juice for a modest squeeze
Review: This book was one of NPR's Alan Cheuse's picks of the season. While I admired it for its intense brevity, there were simply too many unfulfilled metaphors (a certain pink buffalo comes to mind) and lamentably lame high-techery to truly engage the reader (a hand-held neutron bomb, in essence, devoid of any calamitous health effects!). Although the well-sketched characters are praiseworthy, the mind boggles at the slipshod editing: the cause of, motivation for, and perpetrators of one entire scene (the conflagration in the marina) are never revealed, nor even implied. Just another, uh, fluke in a sea of editorial red herrings, intentional or otherwise. That said, there is a hint of Hemingway-esque majesty in the prologue and scattered throughout its 300+ pages that somewhat ameliorates these shortcomings. In sum, modest juice for a modest squeeze.
Rating: 
Summary: A bit farfetched, but entertaining...
Review: This is Moby Dick light...kind of....however Captain Ahab was a more compelling character than A.J. Braswell even though the whale only took Ahab's leg (at first). This story opens with a giant Marlin taking the life of Braswell's son Tony. The Braswell's we find out much later in the book are a super dysfunctional family which could probably have been the subject of a book all by themselves without bringing Thorn and company into the mix, but what is a James Hall book without Thorn? Thorn is in the process of breaking up with his naked girlfriend Casey, when an MD-11 airliner is the victim of a product demonstration by Morgan Braswell. The Braswell's failing company has developed some kind of ray gun which shuts of all the electrical systems in it's targets and Ms. Braswell is performing a demo for a potential purchaser. The unlucky MD-11 comes down in Blackwater Sound. In probably the best piece of writing in the book, Thorn is involved in rescue efforts. Events conspire from there on in to draw Thorn into the vortex of the Braswell family along with some other entertaining characters to a somewhat predictable and bloody conclusion. However, Hall always entertains and this is no exception. Not a bad beach read.
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