Once a top-secret “Alpha” military assassin, Cordell Logan now fills his days as a flight instructor, struggling to pay his bills, and watching Monday Night Football with his hilarious Jewish landlady, Mrs. Schmulowitz. That is until his ex-wife, Savannah, arrives at his hangar to tell him her new husband has been murdered. Arlo Echevarria, Savannah’s husband, was Logan’s boss, best friend, and also a member of Alpha.
When Logan starts looking into Echevarria’s death, at the request of his ex-wife’s father, his life as an assassin once again comes to the forefront. As Logan tenaciously searches for Echevarria’s killer, it becomes clear that many people don’t want him to know the truth. The cast of characters in this twisted murder mystery will leave you drooling for the next installment.
Filled with interesting characters, humorous prose, and bitingly genuine dialogue, Freed has a winner in this intrepid tale of murder and deceit. Freed’s personal knowledge of his subjects, aviation, counterterrorism, and military operations are clearly evident. When Logan takes to the cockpit, it feels as if the reader is there, too.
I can’t wait for the next book in this Cordell Logan series.
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 is, after all, 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 simply as “Alpha.” Though Savannah was never privy to the gritty details of their assignment, she suspects that Echevarria’s death must be related to the work he did for the government. The only problem is, the LAPD can find no record of Echevarria 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 on the skills he honed working for the government, 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. Along the way, Logan is stalked by a mysterious motorist who repeatedly tries to kill him. 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.
Transcending the worlds of murder, aviation and international counterterrorism, Flat Spin resonates with a veracity that only an author who knows his subject firsthand can deliver.