James W. Hall

James W. Hall is an American crime novelist best known for a long-running series featuring beachcomber and reluctant investigator Thorn, set in the Florida Keys, beginning with Under Cover of Daylight (1987). A former university literature professor, he has also written standalone thrillers and nonfiction on the craft of popular fiction. In this catalogue he appears only as one of thirteen contributors to Naked Came the Manatee (1996), a round-robin novel serialized in the Miami Herald's Tropic magazine, with each chapter written by a different South Florida crime writer, including Edna Buchanan, Carl Hiaasen, and Dave Barry -- a novelty project reflecting the tight-knit Miami crime-writing scene of the era rather than his Thorn series or other solo work, which sits outside this catalogue's scope.