Magic City: A Novel by James W. Hall

From the Publisher

A simple black and white photograph taken during the 1964 Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston fight on Miami Beach may hold the key to a horrific, politically-motivated crime forty-two years earlier. After it mysteriously reappears, the photo is burned in an act of arson that sets off a modern-day killing spree reaching from the quiet neighborhoods of Miami to the back corridors of the White House.

What the killer did not know is that a copy of the photograph still remains. When it falls into Thorn's hands, he and everyone he close to him—including his beloved Alexandra—become the targets of madmen and trained hitmen, each of whom has a powerful motive to see the photograph destroyed…and will go to murderous lengths to make it disappear forever.

Publishers Weekly

Richard Allen has a rich, mellifluous voice, the kind that reassures you in slow, measured terms that everything is going to be all right. Unfortunately, it's the wrong kind of voice for a dark, fast-paced thriller. Magic City chronicles an array of inhumane behavior triggered by the hunt for a black and white photograph snapped 43 years ago. The latest adventure of Hall's heroic and resourceful beach bum, Thorne, is filled with violence, murder, broken romances, family betrayals and secrets that could change the history of Florida. It's the sort of material that demands a hard-edged if not hard-boiled delivery. Instead of matching the pace of the action, Allen slows things down to a crawl with a soft, unhurried rendition. When Hall writes: "Permeating the house was the harsh acrid reek of a death chamber," he clearly didn't mean for it to be read in a floating, unemotional singsong. There are audio books with narrators who are not quite the perfect fit for the material, but rarely does one find a mismatch this egregious. Simultaneous release with the St. Martin's Minotaur hardcover (Reviews, Jan. 15). (Mar.)

Library Journal

On February 25, 1964, in Miami, Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) beat Sonny Liston to win the world heavyweight championship. The same evening, a family of Cuban exiles is brutally murdered, along with four militiamen who have sworn to liberate their homeland. The murders are never solved. Forty years later, enigmatic series hero Thorn (Blackwater Sound) is visiting Alexandra in Miami when two men attempt to steal a photograph in his possession that was taken during the Clay/Liston match. Thwarted in their efforts, the two persist, leading Thorn into a search for answers that uncovers corruption in Miami's government and a CIA plot to facilitate a second invasion of Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. In his 14th novel, Hall has written a gripping tale of dirty politics, love gone wrong, murder for hire, and international intrigue that is impossible to put down. Highly recommended for all popular fiction collections.-Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A 40-year-old photograph triggers a spate of killings in southern Florida. Snake Morales is the son of a Cuban exile. The biggest night of his life came in 1964, when he was 12 and his idol Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston right there in Miami. Later that night, masked men and a masked woman broke into his house, killing his father (organizer of a small anti-Castro militia), his mother and his devout sister Carmen. Snake killed one intruder with a machete and mangled the hand of another, but his failure to save Carmen, the love of his life, consumed him. Stanton King, the charismatic young mayor, and his wife Lola adopted Snake and his kid brother Carlos, but this provided no relief. Fast-forward to 2004, when the washed-up former mayor notices a photo of the fight that shows him sitting beside four clandestine types. Realizing the photo could compromise national security, King goes bananas. He has Snake and Carlos burn every copy they can find. Carlos, "still a junior high punk," kills the photographer for kicks. Enter Thorn, that free spirit of the Keys (Forests of the Night, 2005, etc.), along with his main squeeze Alexandra and her grouchy father Lawton, who has the last remaining copy of the photo. Thorn and Snake form an uneasy partnership to unravel the tangled history behind the incriminating photo and the Morales family massacre, which was both a crime of passion and a CIA plot. There are murders galore, but the premise-that national security is still at risk-isn't credible, and the crazed avenger Snake is a troubling protagonist, neither hero nor villain in a genre that craves tidy definitions. Factor in four bad guys with separate missions tripping over each other, and the resultof all the fits and starts is more confusion than suspense. Disappointing. First printing of 75,000. Agent: Caroline Dawnay/PFD

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Product Details

• ISBN: 031294747X
  
• ISBN-13: 9780312947477
• Format: Mass Market Paperback, 336pp
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Pub. Date: February 2008
• Edition Description: Reprint
• Sales Rank: 16,760

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents