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Body Language (Thorn Mysteries) | 
 enlarge | Author: James W. Hall
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $0.01
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Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 179379
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 0312192436
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780312192433
ASIN: 0312192436
Publication Date: August 15, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
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Amazon.com Review
Of all the crime writers currently mining Florida for fictional gold, James W. Hall is arguably the best at catching that state's unique topographic heartbeat. In his books about beach bum Thorne (including Buzz Cut, Mean High Tide, and Hard Aground), you can smell the ocean mixed in with the blood. Now Hall is starting a new series, about Miami police photographer Alexandra Rafferty, and readers will probably overlook the nagging feeling of some ingredients from other Florida writers tossed into the mix (Elmore Leonard's gallery of colorful sociopaths, Carl Hiaasen's over-the-top quirkiness) because of dead-on descriptions like this: "Jennifer McDougal's small white cottage at 2709 Leafy Way was wedged between two Coconut Grove mansions. To the west was a massive high-tech structure with severe angles, skylights, buttresses, heavy concrete archways, and dozens of columns holding up a grape trellis. A neon flamingo was lit up beside the massive front doors and neon numerals flickered beneath it." Alexandra is a fascinating character, wounded by a childhood rape. Very protective of her ex-policeman father who saved her then and has now slipped into senility, she deliberately keeps her talents and emotions in check. Her husband (one of those lovable Leonard lunatics) is an armored-car driver secretly planning the crime of the century, and the rest of the plot involves the search for a killer of young women who leaves his victims in unusual postures. --Dick Adler
Product Description
From the nationally bestselling author of "Under Cover of Daylight" and "Red Sky at Night" comes an electrifying suspense novel about a female forensic photographer on the trail of a brutal killer with ties to her past. "James Hall's prose runs as clean and fast as Gulf Stream waters".--"The New York Times Book Review".
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 Fair....Bordering on Ho-Hum. July 3, 2006
Mommabookworm (Ca.)
This is the fist Hall book I have read. I don't think I will be reading anymore. I was a little bored with this story. Things were ok until characters Emma and Norman entered. They are so weird, that the story lost its substance. I got tired of the cockroach riddles and stories. Adding Jennifer to the duo just made them that much more uninteresting. I'm not sure where Alex's political friend was supposed to fit in the story. It seemed like a chapter from another book got mixed up in this story. I would have preferred more follow up with the murders than all the dialogue between Alex and her Alzheimer ridden father. That got a little old.
Thank goodness this was a library book and didn't cost me anything.
A Dysfunctional Comedy of Errors May 31, 2006
Marc Ruby™ (Warren, MI USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I really did want to like this book. I have a fondness for the gruesome, and this book's blurbs all bill it as a serial killer procedural introducing Alexandra Rafferty, a scene of the crime photographer. I was more than a little surprised to find it was mostly melodrama even including the short trips into the mind of 'The Bloody Rapist.' The crimes consist of a series of women who are raped, their throats slashed, and then are left in contorted positions with trails of blood leading to their bodies. Unfortunately, procedure is almost completely lacking, and what passes for detection is mostly serendipitous luck.
Alexandra is an unfortunate heroine. A rape when very young has left her with permanent scars, not the least from killing the boy who violated her. She is married to an egotistical football player who is several cells short of a brain. And her father is falling victim to Alzheimer's. This would be a tragic life in most circumstances, but when her husband decides to mastermind the robbery of the contents of the armored card he drives, the whole thing falls apart. Alexandra discovers her husband's girlfriend, her father discovers the money and soon a pair of psychotics are chasing after her. In addition to Mr. Bloody Rapist, who is, for some not so mysterious reason, fascinated with Alexandra.
The key problem is that the plot keeps advancing by accident and coincidence. The characters betray very little sense including Alexandra who uses her rape at the age of 11 as the reason for becoming an accessory after the fact and causing several deaths as a result. I also find that turning Alzheimer's into comic relief (and the plot primary mechanism) is inappropriate. One gets quickly tired of this sadly damaged man wandering in to a scene and mostly due to silliness, finding clues everyone else has missed.
Hall is a good writer, and I've long been a fan of his Thorn series, but this story is one of those books that simply shouldn't have been written. And having been written, it should have been heavily edited. My advice is to skip this book and look into Hall's others, in particular the Thorn books.
 Awful. February 20, 2006
Zoeseph Landisgood (Sacramento, CA)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book was terrible. I was told it was good so I started to read it, but I found I could barely finish it. I don't even read mystery books and I knew who the killer was in the first twenty pages. The "heroine" of this tale (I use this term very loosely) was boring and uninteresting and frankly also kind of easy. The other characters in the book weren't much better. None of them were developed past a name and physical description. The action sequences were bumbling and the subplot confusing. There were some good ideas in this book but the author never took the time or energy to develop them. It read like someone's leftover brain storming ideas thrown hastily together. Don't even bother with this book.
HUGE Disappointment June 24, 2004
R. T. (GA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
James Hall is a gifted writer; that's why I can't understand why or how this book was written. Hall writes two types of books; the series about unofficial private detective Thorn, and stand-alone books in the crime category which feature bold plots and crazy characters in the tradition of Elmore Leonard. Body Language was obviously meant to be the second type of book, but in addition to the "crime-gone-wrong" plot which is littered with bizarre villians, there is also a second plot which is a hackneyed, boring "Silence of the Lambs" rip-off plot of the type that sprang up in dozens of horrible novels after Thomas Harris hit the jackpot with his masterpiece in the early 90s. I honestly can't belive that anybody, especially a writer of Hall's caliber, would tackle such an overdone genre these days. He attempts to combine the serial killer and "crime of the century" plots, which turns the book into a muddled, confusing novel that doesn't seem to know what it's trying to be. The writing is also far below his normal standard; there are some sex scenes that are written so poorly that even the most low-paid romance writer would be embarrased to put her name on them. Hall's dialogue in this one is also stilted and uninteresting. In addition, the "mystery" of the serial killer is so simple and predictable that most readers will have it figured out before the first 100 pages. Try Hall's other books if you want a good, entertaining read. Only try Body Language if you're having trouble sleeping.
 Not up to par March 10, 2004
Daniel Wilcox (Spencer, NY United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Read Under Cover of Daylight, Buzz Cut or Mean High Tide if you want a good book by this author. This one has some great possibilities, but it just doesn't quite live up to those. Situations were too contrived and obvious. Check it out of the library and you will get your money's worth. :-)
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