Jacksonville, as even the most loyal of residents would admit, is a far cry from places like Chicago, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.

Think Lorenz Tate in the movie Love Jones or Michael Myers in So I Married an Ax Murderer. Think amateur poets on a nightclub stage reciting their own original poetry for an audience of patrons who snap their fingers or raise lit cigarette lighters in a show of approval.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s literary reputation is immense and well deserved. Often credited with being the most important writer of the Latin American Boom of the 1960’s and ’70’s and author of several classics studied in colleges everywhere, his literary reputation is matched only by his political connections— the most famous (infamous?) being his close relationship with Fidel Castro.

For his debut in the United States, M.R. Hall appears to be trying to introduce Jenny Cooper (the heroin of The Coroner, his first novel) to a whole new audience with his appropriately titled second novel, The Disappeared.