Only two more weeks to get a super deal on the ebook of Under Cover of Daylight for Kindle. You can find it HERE.

The beauty of newspaper book reviewers is that they have the space and usually the passion and intelligence, as Oline Cogdill does, to dig into the substance of a novel they're reviewing rather than just recount the plot.

I doubt I'll get a better review than this one from Oline in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
Murder gets personal for Hall's Thorn

By Oline Cogdill, Correspondent

November 20, 2011


'Dead Last' By James W. Hall. Minotaur, 304 pages, $25.99

The newspaper obituary isn't just the announcement of a person's death and service schedule. Obits often are homages to a life well lived, an insightful look at a person and the impact he or she had on their world.

But in the intriguing "Dead Last," the obit becomes a sinister weapon that takes aim at Thorn, James W. Hall's perennial Key Largo beach bum.

Thorn has never been the most sociable of characters -- content to eke out a living tying fishing flies, enjoying "the wayward scent of wilderness" and becoming involved with one nefarious crime after another.

But the death of Rusty Stabler, his wife of one month, throws Thorn into grief-fueled rage over which he has little control. "Some crucial atom inside him had cracked apart and all the wild-eyed craziness . . . stabilized by her presence went into a state of fission." Nearly suicidal, Thorn starts burning everything he owns -- clothes, furniture, mementoes. The bonfire "cleansing" is in full force when Buddha Hilton, the 19-year-old sheriff of Starkville, Okla., shows up at Thorn's Key Largo house. Michaela Stabler, a high-profile lawyer who was Buddha's adoptive mother and Rusty's aunt, was murdered in her bed in Starkville. Rusty's newspaper obituary was placed next to the body.

The murder scene is eerily similar to "Miami Ops," a failing TV crime show being filmed in South Florida that is written by Sawyer Moss and stars his twin brother, Flynn. Adding to the coincidence, the Moss brothers are the only sons of April Moss, the newspaper obit writer and an old acquaintance of Thorn.

Buddha has little use for Thorn, and both are out of their comfort zones in the urban jungle of Miami. But they make a credible detective team as they investigate whether the growing pattern of murders is a ploy for better TV ratings.

Hall always has made it easy to want to get lost with Thorn as he wanders Florida, and this 12th outing continues those high standards. "Dead Last" works as an exciting detective novel but also provides an insightful look at grief and rising above pain, and proves the adage that when one door shuts, another opens. The usually laconic Thorn is a fury-filled machine whose grief makes him ready to slash out at anyone in his way. The calm Buddha, who bears the physical marks of horrendous abuse as a child, sees through Thorn and forces him to deal with his grief. The scene where Buddha passes on her observations to Thorn about his personality is an inspiring moment full of humor and truth. A surprising plot twist signals a change for Thorn that he may not be equipped to handle.

"Dead Last's" solid story and characters who continue to grow show why Hall, who retired in 2009 as a literature professor at Florida International University, ranks at the top echelon of Florida mystery writers.

Oline Cogdill can be reached at olinecog@aol.com.

A nice early review from Shelf Awareness


Book Review
Dead Last

Dead Last by James W Hall (Minotaur Books, $25.99 hardcover, 9780312607326 , December 6, 2011)

James W. Hall (Magic City; Silencer), South Florida resident, Edgar Award winner and creator of Thorn, that Key Largo loner whose renegade style always gets results, has written another page-turner, this time with a surprising twist.

April Moss, obituary writer for the Miami Herald, has been on the job for some time, without incident. Sawyer, one of her twin sons, writes scripts for a cable TV series called Miami Ops and has been using the obits as part of his storyline. The other twin, Flynn, is the lead actor on the series.

In the show, a serial killer is using obits to select his victims. Suddenly, a copycat appears: a real-life serial killer using April's obits.

Thorn's wife, Rusty, has just died as the story begins. April writes an obit about Rusty, and a copy is found at the bedside of her Aunt Michaela, murdered by an unknown intruder. A young sheriff from Oklahoma is investigating the murder and travels to Key Largo to ask Thorn for help. Thorn is in the process of losing it--burning all his possessions, moving rocks around, spending days and nights in his hammock, refusing help offered by his P.I. friend, Sugarman. The sheriff, Buddha Hilton, arrives and talks him into helping her because, somehow, this murder is tied up with Rusty. Together, they go to Miami to begin tracking clues. Other murders take place, also with April's obituary notices left at the crime scene. Buddha sees a pattern in how the killer decides on the victim, the place and the weapon.

Meanwhile, the crime show gets a great boost in ratings from all the publicity. There are paparazzi everywhere--asking Thorn for information, knowing that he is always around when there is bad news; wondering what Buddha's doing there from Oklahoma; and asking April if she feels like an accomplice in the murders.

There are plenty of suspects to go around: Gus, the show's producer, had a career making porn films with his daughter, Dee Dee, the female lead in the show. This is his last shot; if the show tanks, he'll never work again. Dee Dee has a screw loose and is absolutely delighted that the show has a new life, even if people are dying. Sawyer wants his show to be renewed and Flynn enjoys being a leading man, even though he is too dyslexic to memorize lines. For good measure, a guy named Jeff, who is a critter exterminator extraordinaire, has his reasons to do a number on Sawyer.

Which, if any, of these leading suspects, is the right one? As if that weren't enough of a puzzle, Thorn gets the surprise of his life in the course of the investigation. --Valerie Ryan

Shelf Talker: Florida Keys loner Thorn joins an Oklahoma sheriff to try to sort out the motivation behind a series of copycat killings based on a TV show.

Google already has posted a few sample chapters of Dead Last which you can find here.

Those devils.

Three changes to see me at the Miami Book Fair.

Go here for the book fair website.


I'll be doing a panel with Jeff Lindsay (Dexter), John Connolly (a wonderful writer and funny guy) and Jeff Abbott (who I'll be meeting for the first time.) That's in the auditorium at 2 PM on Saturday.

Then John Durfresne and Ann Hood and Ana Menendez at 4:30 to discuss the short story collection Blue Christmas--kind of noirish holiday stories.

Then I'll also be singing a walk-on with the Rock Bottom Remainders. Here's the info on that.

The Book Tour for Dead Last

DEAD LAST

Here's the book tour for Dead Last. A quick drive around Florida. With one side trip to NYC. I'll be making a slightly longer tour in April to some of these same locations and a few more, including a bunch of libraries, for the publication of HIT LIT.


Tuesday, November 22

7:00 PM to 8:00 PM EST
Reading and signing
MURDER ON THE BEACH
273 Pineapple Grove Way
(NE 2nd Ave)
Delray Beach, FL 33444
Contact: Joanne Sinchuk
561-279-7790
murdermb@gate.net
www.murderonthebeach.com



Monday, November 28


8:00 PM to 9:30 PM EST
Reading & signing
BOOKS & BOOKS
265 Aragon Ave.
Coral Gables, FL 33134
Contact: Cristina Nosti
305-442-4408
cristina@booksandbooks.com


Tuesday, November 29


1:00 PM to 2:30 PM EST
Reading and signing
HOOKED ON BOOKS
81909 Overseas Highway
Islamorada, FL 33036
Contact: Cathy Keller
(305) 517.2602
hookedonbooks@bellsouth.net
http://www.hookedonbooksfloridakeys.com/


December 30th

Drop in Signing
Mysterious Bookshop
New York City, NY

Monday, December 5

7:00 PM to 8:30 PM EST
Reading and signing
VERO BEACH BOOK CENTER
2145 Indian River Blvd.
Vero Beach, FL 32960
Contact: Cynthia Grabenbauer
772-569-2050


7:00 PM to 8:30 PM EST
reading & signing
BOOKMARK
220 First Street
Jacksonville, FL 32233-5273
Contact: Rona Brinlee
904-241-9026


Thursday, December 8



7:00 PM to 8:30 PM EST
Reading and signing, along with Lisa Unger
INKWOOD BOOKS
216 South Armenia Ave.
Tampa, FL 33609
Contact: Leslie
813-253-2638



Saturday, December 10

1:00 PM to 2:30 PM EST
Reading and signing
CIRCLE BOOKS
St. Armands Circle
Sarasota, FL 34236
Contact: Eric Lamboley
941-388-2850
circlebooks@verizon.net


Saturday, December 10

4:00 PM to 5:00 PM EST
reading & signing
HASLAM'S
2025 Central Avenue
St. Petersburg, FL 33713
Contact: Ray
(727) 822-8616


FT. MYERS
Tuesday, December 13


7:00 PM to 8:30 PM EST
reading & signing
BARNES & NOBLE
13751 Tamiami Trail
Ft. Myers, FL 33912
Contact: Mercedes Lawler
239-437-0654

The first review for Dead Last is in and it's excellent. Publisher's Weekly:


In Edgar-winner Hall’s compelling 12th novel featuring Florida PI Daniel Thorn (after 2010’s Silencer), Thorn mourns the sudden death of his new wife, Rusty Stabler, in typically idiosyncratic fashion—by burning his possessions. Then Buddha Hilton, the 19-year-old sheriff of Starkville, Okla., arrives in Key Largo to ask for Thorn’s help. Rusty’s aunt, Michaela Stabler, who was Buddha’s adoptive mother, has been stabbed to death in Starkville; Rusty’s Miami Herald obituary was placed beside Michaela’s body. The juxtaposition of clipping and corpse mimics a TV drama, Miami Ops, which employs the twin sons of the obituary’s writer, April Moss, whom Thorn knew briefly years before. Is Michaela’s killing a stunt designed to save a failing show or an act with a murkier purpose? As Thorn attempts to untangle fact from fiction, a revelation about his past changes his life. As always, Hall combines crisp prose, solid psychology, sardonic humor, and glimpses of an edgy, fast-changing Florida into a suspenseful and satisfying whole. (Dec.)

Hit Lit

There'll be more on this later, but I wanted to put up the cool cover that Random House is using for Hit Lit, my book on bestsellers. Coming April 11, 2012.

It took a while to get these four books of poetry together in the same volume. But it's finally done.

The Lady from the Dark Green Hills, Carnegie Mellon University Press
The Mating Reflex, Carnegie Mellon University Press
False Statements, Carnegie Mellon University Press
Ham Operator, Ampersand Press

I started writing poetry at the age of 18, published my first poem (in Antioch Review) at nineteen, and I was 26 when Lady from the Hills was published. I stopped writing poetry at the age of 40 when my first novel was published.

The novels really tapped the same creative wellspring and didn't leave a lot left for poetry. But I learned a lot about writing, about the music of language, about finding the right word for the right place, about imagery and metaphor and nuance from all those years of writing poetry.

Now you can get the whole collected works for a mere 3 bucks.

Climate Change

What is it about climate change that stirs such passion?

Why would scientists all over the planet enter into a conspiracy to pull a hoax on the public?

My guy Thorn who lives a pretty low-impact green life, is about to get drawn into all this in a very big way.

The new novel (titled Swelter at the moment) is underway. Planning finished, research done, first scene written. Off to the races.