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A Cordell Logan Mystery • Book 5
by David Freed
Why You'll Love This
An ex-government assassin turned flight instructor and aspiring Buddhist walks into a murder case he wants nothing to do with — that tension alone carries the book.
- Great if you want: a morally complex protagonist who resists being a hero
- The experience: breezy but sharp — Southern California noir with dry wit
- The writing: Freed keeps the prose lean and the irony understated throughout
- Skip if: you haven't read earlier Logan books — backstory adds weight here
About This Book
When a wealthy big game hunter and his wife are shot dead on their California estate, the case looks airtight — a zealous animal rights activist with a military background and a criminal record seems like the obvious suspect. But Cordell Logan, a flight instructor with a complicated past as a government assassin and an ongoing experiment in Buddhist detachment, can't quite walk away when mutual friends pull him in. What follows is an investigation that keeps complicating itself, as new motives surface and the tidy narrative the police have constructed starts to fray at the edges. The stakes are personal, the moral questions are genuine, and the California heat feels thick on every page.
David Freed writes crime fiction with an unusually light, dry touch — Logan's sardonic interior voice keeps the tension from becoming oppressive without undercutting the genuine danger. The Rancho Bonita setting is rendered with the affectionate skepticism of someone who knows Southern California wealth from the inside. At 272 pages, the novel moves efficiently, never padding its mystery or overexplaining its protagonist. Freed trusts the reader, and that trust makes the whole thing feel sharper and more satisfying than most entries in the genre.
