Rough Draft - Softcover

James W. Hall

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0002258269 ISBN 13: 9780002258265

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2000

Synopsis

When her parents were murdered, Hannah Keller was 3,000 miles away, on leave from her job with the Miami Police Department. Her family's only survivor on that deadly day was Hannah's six-year-old son Randall. While fishing on the dock behind his grandparents' house, the boy glimpsed the killers, and later discovered his grandparents' bullet-riddled bodies.

About this title

Review:

James Hall's series about beach bum Thorne (Mean High Tide, Buzz Cut, Hard Aground) placed him firmly in a Holy Trinity of Floridian crime novelists. Like Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, Hall brought to life Florida's alluring, addictive mix of sand and ocean, hibiscus and alligator, tanned skin and pastel stucco. Rough Draft, however, is less concerned with place than with plot: Miami is a cipher, a generic background for the convoluted whodunit (or perhaps more precisely, who's doing it to whom) Hall weaves around former policewoman and successful crime writer Hannah Keller.

Fiercely protective of her brilliant but haunted 11-year-old son, who five years ago witnessed the murders of his grandparents (presumably by the embezzler his grandfather was pursuing), Hannah becomes an unwitting pawn in an FBI operation to catch Hal Bonner. Bonner is a Cali assassin with a particularly brutal "signature." Since J.J. Fielding escaped with $463 million in drug money, Hal is hot on his trail; if--the FBI assumes--he can be persuaded that Hannah has found Fielding and the cash, he'll emerge from hiding to exact revenge. They lay a series of clues for Hannah to follow, beginning with a gruesomely annotated copy of her first book that seems to be a direct message from her parents' killer. But as the 72 hours allotted to the plan unfold, it becomes increasingly clear that Hannah will not be led by breadcrumbs; she prefers making her own path.

For sheer presence and emotional depth, Hannah may not be on a par with Alexandra Rafferty, the Miami police photographer of Body Language, and the machinations of the FBI agents--mostly an unpleasant bunch who are wound tighter than the proverbial top--may seem so labyrinthine as to verge on the ridiculous. But Hall serves up a delicious pair of villains in Hal and Misty (who is stalking Hannah for her own purposes). The slow-thinking killer and the quick-talking Hooters girl are chillingly vicious and oddly funny; picture a Capra-esque screwball courtship conducted at the Bates Motel. --Kelly Flynn

From the Inside Flap:

The Bookcassette® format is a special recording technique developed as a means of condensing the full, unabridged audio text of a book to record it on fewer tapes. In order to listen to these tapes, you will need a cassette player with balance control to adjust left/right speaker output. Special adaptors to allow these tapes to be played on any cassette player are available through the publisher or some US retail electronics stores.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0002258269
• ISBN 13: 9780002258265
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352