Magic City
James W. Hall
St. Martin's Minotaur / 304 pages / $24.95

A Florida-based writing professor, Hall has pleased many crime fiction fans over nearly two decades with his action-packed thrillers, most of them starring the one-named antihero Thorn. Magic City, the 14th book in the series, should win Hall further admirers, thanks to a story line that goes back into the annals of Miami history and exposes the dark brutality lying beneath the city's gaudy, overly bright surface. The action stems from a single picture taken in 1964 in the midst of Cassius Clay's surprise heavyweight title victory over Sonny Liston, showing a group of individuals who had no business being photographed together. Hired killers, CIA agents and aging power brokers have killed, and will kill again, to suppress the photo - but when it lands in Thorn's hands by way of his girlfriend's father, his own protective instincts kick in and the race is on for who will prevail in the bloodshed sweepstakes. Hall's action scenes are starkly poetic and his authoritative command of Miami lore and politics - and the shadowy relationships providing a necessarily nasty undercurrent - sharpens an already excellent offering.

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