Before Thorn fell in love with crime-scene photographer Alexandra Rafferty, he was involved with Anne Joy, a beautiful woman who abandoned a violent life to forge a new, happier one in the Florida Keys. But her past includes her sadistic brother Vic, now a wealthy rogue businessman who specializes in the hijacking of pleasure boats and who delights in cruelly murdering their owners. Vic is obsessed by his sister and will do whatever it takes to drive his sister's lovers away-even murder. When Vic decides that he must possess the land on which Thorn's beloved home is built, nothing will stand in his way-not even the life of a little girl, the daughter of Thorn's closest friend

James W. Hall is the author of four books of poetry, The Lady from the Dark Green Hills, Ham Operator, False Statements and The Mating Reflex a collection of short stories, Paper Products, a collection of essays, Hot Damn, and fifteen novels, including Under Cover of Daylight, Tropical Freeze, Bones of Coral, Hard Aground, Mean High Tide, Gone Wild, Buzz Cut, Red Sky at Night, Body Language, Rough Draft, Blackwater Sound, Off the Chart, Forests of the Night, Magic City, and Hell's Bay. His books have been translated into a dozen languages, including Japanese, Swedish, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Romanian, Croatian, Dutch and Russian.

Several of the novels have been optioned for film and Hall has written screenplays for two of those projects. His novels have been Book-of-the-Month and Literary Guild selections . He was a Fulbright professor of literature in Spain and is a professor of literature and writing at Florida International University. He and his wife Evelyn and their three dogs, Carrie, Stella and Maggie, divide their time between South Florida and the mountains of western North Carolina.