Body Language

Alexandra Rafferty works nights for the Miami PD, capturing all the grisly details of crimes scenes on film. She lives with her father, an ex-cop who is slipping into senility, and her louse of a husband, who spends his days dreaming about the perfect crime, and his nights with his mistress. A serial killer is leaving the bodies of young women twisted into strange symbols. Juggling crime photos, Alexandra realizes that the symbols are, in reality, letters of the alphabet -- and that they spell out her name. She suddenly finds herself dealing with her chaotic present and coming to terms with her long-buried past in a dangerous roller coaster ride that takes her from the mean streets of Miami to the Florida panhandle -- and straight into the hands of a killer.

James W. Hall travels between his homes in south Florida and North Carolina. For the last 29 years, he has taught literature and creative writing at Florida International University, where his students have included Dennis Lehane, Barbara Parker, and Vicki Hendricks. After publishing four books of poetry and several works of short fiction in such magazines as the Georgia Review and Kenyon Review, Hall began writing crime novels in 1986 with Under Cover of Daylight.