Showing results by author "David Freed"

When retired senior CIA analyst Rico Perris plunges off a cliff in his vintage Porsche while speeding through the mountains of Colorado late one snowy night, the local sheriff rules it an accident. CIA officials, however, suspect otherwise. Their suspicions are soon heightened after two other former intelligence analysts turn up dead under questionable circumstances. All three victims were once assigned to the same top-secret project: an internal review of the CIA's long-rumored involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

More than 40 years after their release from the notorious "Hanoi Hilton", three American prisoners of war return to Vietnam to make peace with their most brutal former captor, a guard whom they've dubbed "Mr. Wonderful". The US State Department hopes reconciliation will help cement a major trade agreement between Washington and the Vietnamese. But when Mr. Wonderful is found murdered, the three ex-POWs are accused of the crime, and the multibillion-dollar deal threatens to unravel.

In 1956 a plane bearing mysterious cargo takes off from a small airport outside Los Angeles and disappears into a raging storm. Nearly 60 years later, while flying over the Sierra Nevada, retired military assassin turned civilian flight instructor and would-be Buddhist Cordell Logan catches a glint of sunlight on metal and spots what appears to be an aircraft wreckage. His life will never be the same.

The irresistible David Freed’s first mystery is a stay-up-late-to-finish thriller. 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.

A notorious, international big-game hunter and his beautiful, former dental hygienist wife are gunned down at long range late one sweltering summer night, while swimming naked on their seaside estate in opulent Rancho Bonita, California. Police investigators are convinced that the killer is a strident, outspoken animal-rights activist, with both military experience and a criminal record. The evidence against him would appear overwhelming - until rumors begin to surface that others may have had their own reasons for committing murder.

Moments before he is executed, the killer of the daughter of Hub Walker, a famous Vietnam War pilot and hero, makes a startling allegation, claiming that the real murderer is a close friend of Walker’s, a prominent U.S. defense contractor. Walker wants to hire somebody willing to spend a few days digging up information that will refute the convicted killer’s groundless but widely reported claims and will help restore his friend’s good name. That somebody, as fate would have it, is Cordell Logan....