Published in 1991. The book itself is in very good condition for its age and is sturdy. The dust jacket shows some minor wear and scuffing. Old price sticker on the back of the dust jacket. Pages have yellowed due to age. Looks like it has not been read much; no dog ears.
When 38-year-old paramedic Shaw Chandler is called out on an emergency call on a warm January evening, all his years of experience can’t prepare him for seeing his father’s dead body stretched out on a bed in a strange house. Twenty years before, his father had disappeared from the young Shaw’s life, leaving him and his alcoholic mother to cope the best they could. Now Shaw is determined to find out why.
In New York Trula Montoya, TV star and Shaw’s high school sweetheart, now struggling with multiple sclerosis, is packing her bags to go home to Key West, convinced that there is a sinister explanation for the disease that is wrecking her life.
Back in the Keys Shaw and Trula begin to pick up the threads of their old romance and their separate quests become one. Soon the present catches up with the past at Key West’s city dump, run by ex-Navy commander Captain Douglas Barnes and his deranged son Dougie, a crazy killer with a dangerously simple mind.
Full of crackling dialogue and sizzling wit, and with more than a touch of macabre, Bones of Coral is a scintillating thriller from a master of the genre. This is James Hall at his powerful best.
