Thorn's venture into Miami turns deadly
An old photo draws the Key Largo recluse into a plot with rogue CIA
agents, Cuban patriots and mob connections.
BY SAM HARRISON, THE MIAMI HERALD
MAGIC CITY.
James W. Hall. St. Martin's Minotaur. 320 pages. $24.95.
The publisher's early pitch for South Florida thriller veteran James W.
Hall's 14th novel claims that Magic City will do for Miami what
L.A. Confidential and Chinatown did for Los Angeles, a
claim both inaccurate and unnecessary. As a setting for unexcelled,
tropical infused, gritty, colorful crime and mystery fiction, Miami long
ago established its unique position and needs no further assist, and
while it's a potent, engaging story, Magic City really breaks
no new ground in that respect.
But the novel further solidifies Hall's mastery of an element that eludes many other contemporary mystery writers: the character and nature of malevolence in all its many disguises. Hall has an uncanny grasp of this driven dark side of human nature that exceeds manipulation, and it runs like a throbbing underground river through everything he writes.
The enigmatic, reclusive, fly-tying, Key Largo stilt house resident Thorn returns in Magic City. Thorn is a man with one name, no Social Security number or driver's license; he has no personal records of any kind. He's got one friend, a half-Norwegian, half-Jamaican, former Monroe County sheriff's deputy called Sugar.
Up to now, he has just wanted to fish or quietly dig the sky and waters of the Keys, while extricating himself from the deadly trouble that finds him. But now he's intent on taking a new and potentially more dangerous step: moving up to Miami to live with his girlfriend Alexandra. He makes a trial run to ride herd on her elderly and cantankerous father, Lawton, a former Miami cop, while Alexandra, a search and rescue officer,
attends a training session in Tampa for a week.
Alexandra lives across the street from a locally well-known photographer, and a picture he took some 40 years ago of the Cassius Clay/Sonny Liston fight in 1964, draws Thorn and a host of others -- mostly scurrilous, psychopathic types -- into a life and death struggle.
On the night the photo was taken in Miami Beach, a Cuban militiaman intent on overthrowing Castro, was gunned down in a late night raid of his house, along with his wife, daughter and several compatriots. The only survivors were two young sons, Snake and Carlos, and in the melee, Snake was able to do some damage of his own, hacking one intruder to death with a machete, and lopping off several fingers of another. The boys were taken in by then-Mayor Stanton King, a rising political star, and raised in a Coral Gables mansion. When the photograph appears 40 years later as part of an exhibit, the now-grown Carlos and Snake are sent by King to get it at any cost.
Turns out the cost is hefty, and bodies begin to drop as the two bungle one attempt after another to acquire the photo. Thorn is drawn in when it becomes apparent that old Lawton has a copy. While barely staying one step ahead of the brothers Thorn begins to learn why the photo is so important, as an intriguing story of government plots, rogue CIA agents, Cuban patriots, mob connections and love affairs emerges.
Magic City is a deftly executed blend of fiction and historical fact. In addition to some illuminating bits concerning Cassius Clay in the days before he became Muhammad Ali, Meyer Lansky figures prominently, and a character who is a dead ringer for Gordon Liddy shines among a rich cast of victims and perps. In a paradoxical twist, Thorn must team with Snake, a wonderfully complex character, to get to the bottom of things.
Hall has taken Thorn out of the Keys and dumped him in a world he doesn't much care for, a city like no other. The result is a top-notch thriller with the kind of bite that leaves a scar, Hall-style.
Sam Harrison is a writer in Ormond Beach.
