Forests of the Night

This was an excellent book. I love how we are given seemingly irrelevent information, which is made clear and all fits together by the end of the book. The dialogue is real, which is something i find lacking in many of these suspense novels today. The storyline is complex and interesting, and makes for a great read. (It would make an awesome movie, too)

James W. Hall is one of the few thriller writers I buy in hardback. He's that good. And this one is no exception. Charlotte Monroe has the ability to read faces, a skill that is described at length in Blink, a wonderful non-fiction book. And this skill gets her in trouble and eventually serves to save a life of someone very close to her. The thrills are there and the great descriptions of people and places, but it is the creation of Gracey, Charlotte's schizophrenic daughter, that really blew me away. The voices she hears are wonderful, sad, scary, real, and funny as all get out. This is one of those novels that defies categories. Some people, expecting an old-fashioned shoot 'em up thriller, might get bogged down in the extra stuff. But it's the extra stuff, Gracey, and the Cherokee legends, etc. that set this book apart. It's my favorite book this year.

Like the draw of dark water or the sway of a viper this novel demands attention. This is a dark novel, even by Hall's standards. All the characters are inexorably tied to the past and this past is bruising them and their loved ones. Lies, madness, revenge, corruption racisim, criminality, ambition, professional rivalry: Hall fills his novel with the ugly aspects of human behavior. From the Red Road at the edge of Coral Gables to Route 19 pasing through Cherokee, North CArolina, a complex manhunt for a wrongly accused Native American bomber and his unbalance step-sister, carried on by his newly informed lawyer father and policewoman wife and the local F.B.I. is manipulated by a local political clan which has been exacting revenge on familial bloodlines in the Cherokee Nation. Bodies thrown into ravines, patricide and death by savage dogs become part of this thriller. There is an ugly fascination here, a skillful shift from our familiar paths with Hall. Well worth the time.

This stand-alone thriller from South Florida series writer James W. Hall weaves an intricate tale of intrigue, from a posh neighborhood in Coral Gables, Florida to a hard-scrabble trailer in the hills of North Carolina. It spans generations of history, from a Cherokee murder in 1838 to current-day vendettas. Police detective Charlotte Monroe arrives home from a grueling day of tests devised to ascertain her special skills at reading faces and body language, and finds her husband and daughter deep in conversation in the kitchen with a stranger. He looks vaguely familiar, and when she recognizes him as Number Eight on the FBI's most wanted list, she slips into her home office to alert the authorities. While she is on the phone, the man, Jacob Bright Sky Panther, abruptly leaves, and Charlotte soon discovers that her teenaged daughter Gracey has gone missing. The SWAT team is called, the chase is on, and Hall's singular skill at interweaving a dense, complicated plot into a very readable thriller has the reader turning pages. Gracey, who suffers from schizophrenia, is a particularly interesting character whose separation from family and medications leads her to fantasies in her own delusional world. She is at great risk as her parents frantically try to find her trail. Hall is masterful at letting us into Gracey's Steven Spielberg version of life, which adds pathos and occasional humor to the extreme danger in which she finds herself. This fast-paced literary thriller fuses historical fact, political intrigue, corruption and family feuds with deep characterizations of a troubled family facing inner terrors of their own. Charlotte's innate ability to read facial expressions could and should lead to a fascinating new series based on her character. Hall has produced thirteen other novels, several of them featuring a Key West beach bum troubleshooter named Thorn, which have been widely received and critically acclaimed. For fans of South Florida mystery thrillers, James W. Hall is perhaps more literary than some of his famous cohorts, like Laurence Shames, Carl Hiaasen, and Randy Wayne White. FORESTS OF THE NIGHT delivers not only as a thriller but also as a page-turner with smarts. Discovery of another exceptional mystery writer is always exciting, if costly. James W. Hall has been added to my must-read list. --- Reviewed by Roz Shea

James W. Hall has set the bar very high for mystery/thrillers coming out this year with "Forests of the Night." It is sophisticated suspense at the highest level...distinguished writing...powerful prose. The first rate story line is concise and examines corruption, wantonness and depravity in man. The villains are beyond salvation and vicious in the way they go about their hideous acts. The last time the criminal element was so chilling was in "Dirty White Boys" by Stephen Hunter. These thugs make your skin crawl and sleep with the light on...because you know they truly exist. The past and present collide...going back 160 years to a deathly pact made between the government and a Cherokee patriot over "The Trail of Tears." A present day descendent (Jacob Panther) swoops down upon a dedicated Coral Gables cop (Charlotte Monroe), her high profile lawyer husband and their schizophrenic teenaged daughter, altering the lives of all as the startling revelations unfold. Panther has assassinated a businessman in Miami and when he takes off for North Carolina, the daughter follows and aids his flight. The Monroes head to North Carolina and are confronted by evil incarnate in the form of a stonewalling sheriff; his father, a corrupt congressman and the congressman's reclusive brother. Their attempts to locate and rescue their daughter are challenged at every level. To say anymore would give away too much. The twists are magnificent and lead to a breath-taking finish. The villain's identity is divulged with about a hundred pages to go...and that only makes you turn the pages faster.