102 in the Shade
In James W. Hall’s Magic City, Even the Shadows Have Shadows
— and They Burn

Key rats and cops, Cuban ultra-nationalists and paid-for politicos, all with secrets to be kept— or else.

By John Hood

Miami seethes with story. High, low and just plain otherwise. Hot, most of those tales tend to be heated, and, as we all well show, heated very often gets intemperate. Our town’s peculiar place in the sun also requires those stories to be shady, very shady, lest each boil over into a rage. But even under the most royal of palms, things bubble up, get blistery, burn.

Yes, in Miami even the shadows scorch.

Neo-noir novelist James W. Hall knows about shady, and he knows about shadow, and, yes, he knows about heat, and what it can do to a town. The rash that can trigger a finger, the sweat that can blind an eye, the bake that can bloody a landscape — he sees it, feels it, lives it, writes it.

Like the town from which it nabs its name, Hall’s Magic City is all hot and then some, despite the fevered cool of its composition. One hundred and two degrees in the shade of even a bright winter’s day, twice that in the head and the heart of its night, it is the snap and crackle and pop of madness making its merry way into our history, the kinda tale we tell ourselves when no one’s talking.

And here the silence is telling. Spooks and mobsters, Key rats and cops, Cuban ultra-nationalists and paid-for politicos, all with secrets to be kept— or else. Like Ellroy doing LA when he got ahold of its most Confidential, or DeLillo in the Big Easy under the sign of Libra, Hall hails the conspiracies of our lives. Dirty deeds get done, and we all come undone.

But it is too a book that very much respects our sodden strip of paradise, its critters, its creatures, its comforts. Wily and well-wrought, Hall has Peter Matthiessen’s learn of the lay of the land, Thomas McGuane’s feel for the way of the water, John D. MacDonald’s sense of propriety and Carl Hiaasen’s wage against the killing of the light.

Beyond all that, though, Hall’s Magic City is the story of a town sprung from overheated imaginations and overstimulated drives, a mess of murder and mayhem and mystery. That it’s the cat’s 14th book to break and still manages to remain quintessentially compelling can only mean one thing — Hall’s sure damn good at telling a badass story.

We gave the FIU professor of lit and writing a few Qs to A; this is what he had to say:

Why Miami?

It’s everything everywhere else wants to be. And, my god, what luck, it’s home.
Hiaasen or Barry?

Love ’em both. Carl put the Z in zany, and Dave put the green in booger.
Chandler or Hammett?

Who can choose? Poetry and hardass.

Thompson or Spillane?

Thompson. For the lurid, elbow-in-your-face prose.

Crews or Willeford?

You mean Feast of Snakes, Harry? Oh, my. I love A Childhood about as much as any book I’ve read. He does Florida better than nearly anyone. Charlie was dark and twisted and wonderful. Kiss Your Ass Good-Bye. How could you not love a writer who titles a novel that? And he was a colleague of James Lee Burke for a while at Miami-Dade. Now there’s some nuclear fission.

Ellroy or Connelly?

Mike not James. Miami is the new, weirder LA.

Buchanan or Grafton?

Sue’s got a few more letters to go before she’s rich as Oprah. Wish I’d thought of that 20 years ago. And Edna knows her way around badass cops and newsrooms better than anyone out there.
McGee or Dortmunder?

Travis, hands down.

Grift or graft?

Is there a difference?

Knife or gun?

Guns are boring. Knives are evil. It’s the third choice I like the best.

Comments? E-mail letters@miamisunpost.com. Hood is online at www.therealjohnhood.com.