Thursday, March 8, 2012

Review: Flat Spin by David Freed

Synopsis:
Based in sunnyrancho 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 assasination team known as "Alpha." The onu 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 the skills he honed working for Alpha, Logan doggedly hunts Echevarria's killer.

His trail takes him for 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.


Publication Date: April 2012
Genre: Adult Fiction, Thriller, Mystery
Source: Thanks so much to the Author, David Freed, for my review copy!


Review:
Alright, here's another good Mystery novel!  I'm not very good at solving the mystery in any book (or in Scooby Doo for that matter...) and this one was no different :)

The main thing that I found immensely appealing was Cordell Logan himself.   His interactions are all dead-on and entertaining to read. His sharp wit and sarcasm permeate the dialogue and tone of the book. Logan is this ex-special-ops kind of guy, but he lives this minimalistic bachelor lifestyle.  He doesn't flaunt his many physical and mental skills unless he needs to and exudes a 'kiss-my-ass' kind of attitude whenever humanly possible.  What's great is that a lot of that is just an front he puts on to make sure he doesn't get hurt...again.  His wife left him for his buddy-in-arms, Arlo, from Alpha and he's been trying to lay low and move on ever since.  Of course this is not to be when Arlo turns up dead and ex-wifey wants Logan to talk to the police and gets tangled up in everything.

I thought this was a great read.  It made me reminisce about reading Dirk Pitt books.  I can see Cordell Logan going off on myriad different adventures and getting himself into some sticky situations. A great start to what will hopefully be a series of novels.


You can find out more about this book and the author on David Freed's Website.

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