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    Hot Start: A Cordell Logan Mystery
    Hot Start: A Cordell Logan Mystery
    Hot Start: A Cordell Logan Mystery
    Audiobook8 hours

    Hot Start: A Cordell Logan Mystery

    Written by David Freed

    Narrated by Ray Porter

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The next fast-paced installment in the Cordell Logan series, Hot Start is an adrenaline-fueled, action-packed thrill ride.

    One sweltering summer night, an international big-game hunter and his beautiful wife are shot dead—at long range—while swimming naked at their seaside estate in Rancho Bonita, California. The police are convinced the perpetrator is an outspoken animal-rights activist—who happens to have both military training and a criminal record. The evidence seems overwhelming. But then rumors begin to surface that there may be more than one person with the means and motive for murder.

    The last thing Cordell Logan wants is to get involved in another police investigation. But he and the suspect have mutual friends, and Logan realizes he alone may be the only one able to discover what really happened. At first reluctant, he soon finds himself neck-deep in a confounding conspiracy involving a congressman with close ties to the White House and a ruthless Czech crime boss who will stop at nothing to protect his illicit operations. Finding the truth will take Logan to places he never expected—and expose him to dangers he may not survive.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBlackstone Publishing
    Release dateOct 24, 2023
    ISBN9798212020923
    Hot Start: A Cordell Logan Mystery
    Author

    David Freed

    David Freed is an instrument-rated pilot, produced Hollywood screenwriter, and a former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Community Service, the highest award in American journalism, and shared in a Pulitzer for the newspaper’s coverage of the Rodney King riots. David reported from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. He later worked as a contractor for the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency. He holds a master’s degree from Harvard University and teaches creative writing at Harvard’s Extension School. He lives in Santa Barbara, California. Find him at DavidFreed.com.

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    Reviews for Hot Start

    4/5

    11 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      4.5 stars.

      Hot Start is an intriguing whodunit starring flight instructor and amateur sleuth Cordell Logan. This fifth installment in David Freed's fantastic series can easily be read as a standalone, but I highly recommend the previous novels as well.

      In the midst of a stretch of unseasonably hot and miserable temperatures, Cordell, at the behest of his former father in law Gil Carlisle, finds himself investigating the double homicide of big game hunter and safari charter owner Roy Hollister and his wife Toni. Local police are convinced Carlisle's nephew, animal rights activist and former military sniper Dino Birch, is responsible for the murders since he made no secret of his vehement dislike of Hollister. While not fully convinced of Birch's innocence but unable to say no to Carlisle's request, Logan uncovers a troubling connection between Hollister, local Congressman Pierce Lovell and an international call girl ring. With a little help from good friend and former colleague Buzz, Logan follows the puzzling clues to Prague where he barely escapes with his life. Once he is safely back in California, the sizzling hot weather is cooling down just as his investigation is heating up. Under intense pressure from Washington to prevent a political scandal, Cordell's life is soon in danger as he tries to fit the various pieces of the puzzle together before it is too late.

      The summer heat is putting a dent in Logan's efforts to keep his struggling flight instruction business afloat when Carlisle asks him to take a look at the case against Birch. Unable to say no to his ex-father-in-law's request, Cordell begins his investigation with a rather unhelpful jailhouse interview with Dino. While Birch's vague answers do not exactly convince Logan of the activist's innocence, he still owes it to Carlisle to continue looking into the case. After discovering evidence the police overlooked immediately following the murders, he zeros in on the possible sniper's nest but unfortunately, he finds damning evidence that points right back to Dino.

      Still doggedly pursuing leads, Logan begins looking into Roy's surprising connection to local politician Lovell. What he learns then takes the case in a very unexpected direction so he turns to Buzz for help. With his friend's assistance, he travels to Prague for a meeting with Czech crime boss Emil Sokol whose business dealings tie him to both Hollister and Congressman Lovell. After a rather unpleasant encounter with some very unsavory thugs, Logan’s meeting with Sokol reveals possible political corruption that Washington would prefer to keep under wraps.

      Now under orders to take care of the situation before this information is leaked to the press, Logan returns to California where he continues his investigation. Rumors about Toni begin to surface and Cordell turns his attention to Roy's wife in hopes of uncovering a possible motive for the murders. Is it possible the police have been looking at the case all wrong? Instead of Roy being the killer's target, could Toni have been who the murderer was after all along? Interesting speculation, but will Logan find any evidence to back up this rather unlikely theory?

      With plenty of twists and turns and snatches of unexpected humor, Hot Start is another fast-paced and entertaining addition to David Freed's Cordell Logan Mystery series. Logan is an intrepid sleuth who once again puts his formidable skills as a former covert government operator to work as he diligently investigates the double homicide. A perplexing mystery with a vast pool of suspects and no clearly defined motive, the novel careens to a highly pulse-pounding, adrenaline filled conclusion. An absolutely superb installment that mystery lovers are sure to love.
    • 2/5
      Audiobook. I don’t know if it was the narrator or just the silliness of the story, but I finally abandoned this after making it about 75% through. I just couldn’t get into the plot with its contrived features: the ex-government assassin who’s now a flight instructor approaching penury but with multiple contacts in the agency; the friend’s son accused of murder and overwhelming evidence he did it; the corrupt Congressman; the coincidences that are too numerous to count, and the landlady with a sarcastic tongue and heart of gold. Oh yes, the beloved cat name Kiddiot who is obnoxious, and the on-off relationship with a sheriff’s deputy who lives 200 miles away.Perhaps you’ll like it, I found it a bit juvenile.
    • 5/5
      Cordell Logan is an aspiring Buddhist, pet project of a cat called Kiddiot, dweller in a converted garage, sleeper in hammocks in the summer’s heat, good friend to his ailing landlady, and an ex-military intelligence expert. He’s also the narrator and protagonist in author David Freed’s mystery series, which goes from strength to strength as each new novel is released. In Hot Start, it’s not just the weather or the engine that’s hot – not just California’s rich and beautiful either. But Logan splits his time between duties to his former father-in-law, care for his landlady, a possible love interest, and a need for truth and justice, all the while ignoring his own need for the cool balm of hope and a future.A California heatwave forms the backdrop to this tale, as Logan, divorced and bereaved in earlier novels, determines that flying in this heat would be a bad idea, while his clients insist that flying is what they’ve paid for. The turbulent air of their mistakes is mirrored in turbulent politics and policing of a murder case, where a big game hunter and his wife have been shot, and the man in jail insists he didn’t do it. The plot thickens like the overheated atmosphere as pages turn, throwing the reader in multiple directions. But Logan flies as consistently as his author writes, and these twists and turns all lead to a convincing if scary landing. The landlady might get her sandwich. Justice might be served. And the man who “spent nearly a decade stalking rabid human beings around the globe in the name of national security” might end up heading one more hunt.Hot Start takes readers from the US to Europe and back, leaving the gun behind because carrying heat in Europe’s not a good idea. The writing evokes vivid images of people and place, cool accent and dialog with well-timed touches of humor, and enticing cliff-hanger chapter endings that make the book impossible to put down. It’s a fast-action satisfying read, with the perfect combination of mystery and fear, greed and generosity, and good and evil. At the end of it all, there’s flying, in the smoother air of a cool and peaceful sky, with the wide embracing perspective of two miles high.Disclosure: I was given a preview edition by the publisher and I offer my honest review.