Blackwater Sound by
John Hall
I’ve been an advocate of Florida-based James W.Hall since I read Bones
of Coral back in 1993. Thus I begrudge him none of the accolades from
the usual suspects (Crais, Connelly, Lehane. et al) that adorn his new
book. Hall has always had his writer fans (Coral had endorsements from
Ellroy, Barry Gifford and Thomas McGuane) but huge sales, in this
country at least, have eluded him. Could this be the ‘breakthrough’
novel?
Certainly the occasional Hiaasen comparisons don’t help. Whilst Hiaasen
can be the funniest crime writer on the planet, Hall is by far the
better writer. Both are eco-warriors but whilst with Hiaasen you end
merely marvelling at human idiocy, with Hall you grasp much more of
(and, more importantly, feel for) what is at stake. Read, for example,
the first two chapters of Mean High Tide (1994), with its stark contrast
between the shimmering beauty of the natural world and the brutal death
of a young woman, and you’ll see what I mean.
In Blackwater Sound in fact, the natural world takes a back seat to a
garish, faintly incredible (though well researched) plot involving some
kind of ray gun, technology at least partly available on the internet,
capable of blowing electrical circuits and pulling planes from the sky.
That is, in fact, what happens in the opening chapters of the book,
along with a brief introduction to the Braswell family, ten years
before, as they lose their eldest son, dragged under by a giant blue
marlin that in the present assumes Moby Dick-like significance. Caught
in the tidal wave set up by the crashing plane is Hall’s key protagonist
Thorn, beach-bum, fisherman extraordinaire and occasional investigator.
Whilst bravely rescuing a few of the crash survivors, Thorn notices
another nearby boat, its occupants strangely oblivious to the carnage
that surrounds them. It is the Braswell yacht, home-from-home to the
giant marlin-obsessed Braswell senior and his remaining children.
Thorn’s researches reveal a family of wealth, source an apparently
healthy high technology company...
This is Hall in (hopefully) best-seller mode, psychopaths in place,
stripped down and ready for action. Not that that stops him, early on
in the book, working in a perfectly constructed 26 line sentence! All
the old skills are here in fact. Key to the plot are two well-drawn
lively 72 year-olds, ex-bookie Arnold Peretti and his friend Lawton
Collins, father to Alexandra Collins, heroine of Hall’s earlier Body
Language (1998), and here providing, late in the book, succour to the
now unattached Thorn Lawton, an ex-policeman and amateur yachtsman who
, in spite of being in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, retains his
"sixth sense about navigation£", along with a handy obsession with
Houdini.
It’s all good fun, superbly written, with some chilling reminders of
the greed at the heart of untrammelled capitalism. But the plot premise
never quite loses its Flash Gordon associations, Thorn’s emotional
entanglement with Alexandra seems a trifle perfunctory and it is
disappointing that the giant marlin serves only to bring the key
antagonists together for the book’s explosive finale in the Bahamas.
Still, if you’ve not read Hall before, this is a good enough place to
start. Then go back and read the others.
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