Crime novelist Hannah Keller's obsessive desire to catch her parents' killer leads her to a strange copy of one of her earlier novels, which is filled with strange scrawlings and hieroglyphs that may be clues. 75,000 first printing. Tour. James Hall's series about beach bum Thorne ( Mean High Tide , Buzz Cut , Hard Aground ) placed him firmly in a Holy Trinity of Floridian crime novelists. Like Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, Hall brought to life Florida's alluring, addictive mix of sand and ocean, hibiscus and alligator, tanned skin and pastel stucco. Rough Draft , however, is less concerned with place than with plot: Miami is a cipher, a generic background for the convoluted whodunit (or perhaps more precisely, who's doing it to whom) Hall weaves around former policewoman and successful crime writer Hannah Keller. Fiercely protective of her brilliant but haunted 11-year-old son, who five years ago witnessed the murders of his grandparents (presumably by the embezzler his grandfather was pursuing), Hannah becomes an unwitting pawn in an FBI operation to catch Hal Bonner. Bonner is a Cali assassin with a particularly brutal "signature." Since J.J. Fielding escaped with $463 million in drug money, Hal is hot on his trail; if--the FBI assumes--he can be persuaded that Hannah has found Fielding and the cash, he'll emerge from hiding to exact revenge. They lay a series of clues for Hannah to follow, beginning with a gruesomely annotated copy of her first book that seems to be a direct message from her parents' killer. But as the 72 hours allotted to the plan unfold, it becomes increasingly clear that Hannah will not be led by breadcrumbs; she prefers making her own path. For sheer presence and emotional depth, Hannah may not be on a par with Alexandra Rafferty, the Miami police photographer of Body Language , and the machinations of the FBI agents--mostly an unpleasant bunch who are wound tighter than the proverbial top--may seem so labyrinthine as to verge on the ridiculous. But Hall serves up a delicious pair of villains in Hal and Misty (who is stalking Hannah for her own purposes). The slow-thinking killer and the quick-talking Hooters girl are chillingly vicious and oddly funny; picture a Capra-esque screwball courtship conducted at the Bates Motel. --Kelly Flynn Hall's latest clever thriller will grab new fans and please old ones. Ex-cop Hannah Keller has a successful career writing crime novels. Her teenage son, Randall, witnessed the killing of his grandparents five years ago and still hasn't fully recovered. While waiting in her son's psychiatrist's office, she discovers a copy of her first novel with strange notes and numbers in the margins. Deciphering it reveals what appears to be a direct message to her from the killers of her parents. With the help of a reluctant FBI agent, Hannah decides to play along, but by her own rules. Hall (Body Language) is a master at duping the reader into believing something that inevitably proves to be jaw-droppingly false. A surprising book that should be on all public library shelves. ---Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. A freewheeling FBI unit uses a sorrowing crime writer to get at a brutal hired killerin an intricate thriller that never quite hits the Michael Connelly mark. Five years ago, Hannah Keller's parents were murdered, presumably by the embezzler her father had just seen slip through his fingers. But her Miami PD colleagues never bought Hannah's theory that J.J. Fielding was the killer. Now that she's retired to become a successful crime writer, the Feebees figure she'll be the perfect bait to flush out Hal Bonner, the Cali assassin who likes to kill his victims by squeezing the life out of their hearts. If Hal can be persuaded that Hannah's found Fielding and his boodle, he'll come out of hiding to follow her as she follows the trail of false clues the FBI has laid down, beginning with a mysteriously annotated copy of her first novel that seems to point to Fielding's whereabouts. Though the plot is diabolically clever, the Bureau types are all ciphers, and Hannah, struggling alone to raise her young son Randall, who was traumatized by seeing his grandparents' killers, doesn't leave much more of an impression. But the bad guys, as ever with Hall (Body Language, 1998, etc.), are delightfully hissable. Hal, an idiot savant of homicide with the self-awareness of a cinder block (``He could do math. He could read. He wasn't learning disabled'') meets his match in Misty, a sad-eyed stripper who's stalking Hannah for reasons of her own. It's a shame that it's so obvious for so long what's going to happen when they finally come face to face with her, her son, and her son's house pet. More twists than thrills, but connoisseurs of villainy will appreciate the latest additions to the most memorable gallery of criminal grotesques since the glory days of Dick Tracy. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights