Flat Spin
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
David Freed's first mystery is a stay-up-late-to-finish thriller. It's also got some of the funniest lines - and characters - one is likely to encounter in any mystery, along with a tense and compelling plot and a most original protagonist.
Based in sunny Rancho Bonita - "California's Monaco" as the city's moneyed minions like to call it - Cordell Logan is a literate, sardonic flight instructor and aspiring Buddhist with dwindling savings and a shadowy past. When his beautiful ex-wife, Savannah, shows up out of the blue to tell him that her husband has been murdered in Los Angeles, Logan is quietly pleased. Savannah's late husband, after all, is Arlo Echevarria, the man she left Logan for.
Logan and Echevarria were once comrades-in-arms assigned to a top-secret military assassination team known as "Alpha." The only problem is, the LAPD can find no record of Echevarrias ever having toiled for Uncle Sam. Savannah wants Logan to tell the police what he knows. At first he refuses, but then, relying on his small, aging airplane, the "Ruptured Duck," and the skills he honed working for Alpha, Logan doggedly hunts Echevarria's killer.
His trail takes him from the glitzy Las Vegas Strip to the most dangerous ghettos of inner-city Oakland, from darkened, Russian Mafia haunts in West Los Angeles to the deserts of Arizona. But that's the least of his problems. It is his love-hate relationship with Savannah, a woman Logan continues to pine for in spite of himself, that threatens to consume him.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In journalist Freed's deftly plotted first novel, Cordell Logan, one-time member of the U.S. government's elite "Alpha" antiterrorism assassination squad, is struggling to make ends meet as a flight instructor in California. Cordell sees a chance for a fresh start when his beautiful ex-wife, Savannah Carlisle, gets back in touch with him, albeit for an unflattering reason. The man she left Cordell for, his Alpha colleague Arlo Echevarria, has just been gunned down, and she wants Cordell to inform the LAPD of Arlo's classified past. He agrees, but also begins his own investigation into the crime's connections to Savannah's father, Texas oil tycoon Gil Carlisle, and to the Russian mafia. Readers will find Cordell, intrigued by Buddhism and still emotionally vulnerable from his divorce, an engaging protagonist, despite his incessant wisecracking. Freed, who shared a Pulitzer Prize for the L.A. Times's coverage of the Rodney King riots, capably balances humor and serious themes.
Customer Reviews
Flat Spin by David Freed
How exciting to discover a new author and a protagonist with the humor of the late Robert B Parker's Spencer! And a new and different background. A pilot with a background in deep counterintelligence. I have gone through all of Parker's books, Lee Child, sue grafton, John Gilstrap, Tess Geritsen as well as the Mitch Rapp series from the much lamented late Vince Flynn. I could go on but I've read them all & am excited about a new exciting thrill a minute writer! A wonderful new writer!