Hall returns with real estate plot

Lian Ch'eng

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JANUARY 15, 2010 2:55AM

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"Silencer" (Minotaur Books, 276 pages, $24.99), by James W. Hall: After 10 books, fans of James W. Hall's series featuring an amateur detective named Thorn have grown accustomed to seeing the reclusive roughneck come charging to the rescue. So it's startling, in book 11, to find him spending most his time held prisoner in an underground pit while his friends try to figure out where he is.
As followers of the series know, Thorn recently inherited millions from a distant relative. But the money is wasted on a guy whose idea of a good time is sitting around in cutoffs tying fishing flies in Key Largo.
Thorn can't wait to rid himself of the money, so he puts his girlfriend, Rusty Stabler in charge of figuring out how. Sharing Thorn's love for what's left of Florida's natural landscape, she cooks up a complicated real estate deal to preserve 300 square miles. But some bad people have other plans for the land.
In quick succession, 87-year-old Earl Hammond, a key player in the land deal, is murdered, Thorn is kidnapped and thrown in the pit, and his friends, Stabler and Sugarman, begin their desperate search for him.
Hall, who is not only a fine crime novelist but also an excellent poet, retired recently from his job as a college literature professor. (Dennis Lehane, author of "Gone Baby Gone" and "Mystic River," was once one of his students.)
What Hall has done in "Silencer" would be a big gamble for a lesser talent. It's generally not a good idea to keep your hero immobilized for most of the book. Yet Hall, who excels at character development, has created a passel of fascinating good and bad guys to drive the action.
For example, there's Hammond's greasy son, Browning and his feisty wife Claire, who are suddenly not seeing eye-to-eye. And two low-life brothers, Jonah and Moses Faust, who make their living selling murder memorabilia (autographed picture of Charlie Manson, anyone?). Meanwhile, the brothers also do the occasional contract killing on the side.
These characters and several others keep the story jumping until the very end, when Thorn finds a way out of that pit (you knew he would, right?) to lend the other good guys a last-minute hand.

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This is really interesting edition of Hall's books. Well, not so clear with me but investigatory things really give thrilling ideas. When I was last in the market for buying a home, I was told to find the right real estate agent – which I did, and I was glad for it. I've seen friends get the number for the agent representing the seller of the home they ended up buying, and over paying for, and it was for more than a payday loans worth. The right agent is someone you can work with easily, knows what they’re bloody well doing, and knows how much you can spend and what you want out of a home, to start with. You have to shop around and find the right one, though.