BONES OF CORAL

by James W. Hall ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 31, 1991

Hall's third crime novel walks the line between the lyrical meditations of his first (Under Cover of Daylight, 1987) and the pitch-black humor of his second (Tropical Freeze, 1989)--and proves an enjoyable, resonant thriller. Former protagonist Dick Thorn is gone; in his place broods another working-class hero, Shaw Chandler, a Manhattan EMS worker plunged into mystery when he's called to the house of a murder victim--who turns out to be his dad, vanished for 20 years. His dad's lover gives Shaw a metal canister: ""Your father said you'd know what to do with it."" Shaw doesn't; but when he gets word that his mom is gravely ill in Key West, he sets off for home with the canister. At the same time, two other richly observed characters are heading for Key West: Trula Montoya, Shaw's childhood sweetheart grown into a TV star, now stricken with MS and returning south to gumshoe for a doctor researching the area's dramatic incidence of the disease; and Dougie Barnes, a muscular, rhyme-spouting psycho who feels neither physical nor moral pain and who galvanizes every scene he's in. In Key West, Shaw takes over his mom's tackle shop and runs into Trula; their romance reignites, a source of wonder for both as Shaw explores the sins and death of his father, and Trula speaks with MS victims--twin investigations that converge in the sinister figure of Douglas Barnes, Dougie's dad, owner of the town dump and mastermind of a decades-old toxic-waste-dumping scam (hence the canister). Several killings ensue, while Dougie takes a whacked-out whore for a wife; the exciting climax finds Shaw and Trula scrambling through the rotting wasteland of Barnes's dump--Mt. Trashmore--as Dougie, melting away from a toxic-chemical bath, chases them from the helm of a Munch and Crunch bulldozer. Wry plotting and robust writing, winsome heroes and outrageous villains: another first-rate spin by Hall on the Florida thriller form trail-blazed by Elmore Leonard.

Pub Date: March 31, 1991

ISBN: 031299950X

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1991

Categories: FICTION