Blogging this Week: James Hall

Blogging this week on MomentsinCrime is James Hall. James is an Edgar and Shamus Award–winning author whose books have been translated into a dozen languages. He has written four books of poetry, a collection of short fiction, and a collection of essays. This is his fifteenth novel. He and his wife, Evelyn, divide their time between South Florida and North Carolina.

The Bateses are an aristocratic Floridian family with vast holdings in real estate and mining. When matriarch Abigail Bates is found drowned, a chain of events is set into motion, embroiling Thorn with a family he never knew he had and a fortune he doesn’t want.

Thorn is leading a fishing expedition into the isolated lakes and mangrove swamps of Hell’s Bay when Abigail's son and granddaughter arrive, claiming Thorn as a long lost relative and asking him to solve the woman's murder. But the killer is already on their trail. Soon their houseboat becomes a precarious island of safety. What does the killer want? And why is their predator determined to kill them all, no matter what the cost?

Marilyn Stasio of The New York Times, says "If violence can be poetic, Hall has the lyric voice for it." In this tour de force of suspense, he shows how one family’s dark past comes back to haunt its remotest member--and may ultimately cost him his life.