Laughing Falcon , livre ebook

Ecw Press - William Deverell

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245 pages

English

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'Originally published in 2002 and nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel A blend of thriller, satire, and romance with a shocking twist Romance novelist Maggie Schneider flees snowy Canada for Costa Rica, seeking inspiration and maybe even a romantic encounter. She finds far more than she expected when she s kidnapped by a rag-tag gang led by a handsome, charismatic revolutionary called Halcon: the Falcon. Also held hostage for ransom is Halcon s main target, the flirtatious wife of a right-wing U.S. senator, who seeks to capture the Republican nomination as U.S. president. Enter burned-out ex secret agent Slack Cardinal, the protagonist of Deverell s third novel, Mecca. Now he has changed his name and is hiding out in the Costa Rican jungles, working as a tour guide. But he is found there by CIA operative Ham Bakerfield and reluctantly pressed into service to try to rescue the women.'

Informations

Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	08 novembre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781778520174
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The Laughing Falcon
William Deverell

Contents Praise for William Deverell Also by William Deverell Dedication Prologue The Torrid Zone -1- -2- -3- -4- Hymns to a Dying Planet -1- -2- -3- The Treasure of Savage River -1- -2- -3- -4- -5- Dead Mice in the Beer -1- -2- -3- No Time for Sorrow -1- -2- Do Not Trust Archbishop Mora -1- -2- -3- The Darkside of the Moon -1- -2- -3- -4- Various Views from the Edge of the Precipice -1- -2- -3- -4- -5- -6- Prisoner of Love -1- -2- -3- -4- The Lost Mission of Harry Wilder -1- -2- -3- The Full Guaco -1- -2- -3- -4- -5- Gamma Ray Burster -1- -2- No Time for Sorrow -1- -2- -3- -4- Our Man in Panama -1- -2- Return to the House of Heartbreak -1- -2- -3- Author’s Note About the Author Copyright

Praise for William Deverell
Needles
“Deverell has a narrative style so lean that scenes and characters seem to explode on the page. He makes the evil of his plot breathtaking and his surprises like shattering glass.” — Philadelphia Bulletin
High Crimes
“Deverell’s lean mean style gives off sparks. A thriller of the first rank.” — Publishers Weekly
Mecca
“Here is another world-class thriller, fresh, bright, and topical.” — Globe and Mail
The Dance of Shiva
“The most gripping courtroom drama since Anatomy of a Murder .” — Globe and Mail
Platinum Blues
“A fast, credible, and very funny novel.” — The Sunday Times , London UK
Mindfield
“Deverell has a fine eye for evil, and a remarkable sense of place.” — Globe and Mail
Kill All the Lawyers
“An indiscreet and entertaining mystery that will add to the author’s reputation as one of Canada’s finest mystery writers.” — The Gazette
Street Legal: The Betrayal
“Deverell injects more electricity into his novels than anyone currently writing in Canada — perhaps anywhere . . . The dialogue crackles, the characters live and breathe, and the pacing positively propels.” — London Free Press
Trial of Passion
“A ripsnortingly good thriller.” — Regina Leader-Post
Slander
“ Slander is simply excellent: a story that just yanks you along.” — Globe and Mail
The Laughing Falcon
“The Laughing Falcon is, simply, a wonderful book.” — Sara Dowse, Vancouver Sun
Mind Games
“Deverell is firing on all cylinders.” — Winnipeg Free Press
April Fool
“A master storyteller with a wonderful sense of humour . . . one hell of a ride.” — Quill & Quire
Whipped
“[A] smart, funny, and cleverly plotted series.” — Toronto Star
Kill All the Judges
“Compelling. . . . For all its seemingly lighthearted humour, this is a work of great depth and complexity.” — Globe and Mail
Snow Job
“Fine writing and tongue-in-cheek delivery with acid shots at our political circus, and so close to reality that it seems even funnier.” — Hamilton Spectator
I’ll See You in My Dreams
“[Beauchamp is] endearingly complex, fallible, and fascinating.” — Publishers Weekly
Sing a Worried Song
“[Deverell] may be the most convincing of all writers of courtroom stories, way up there just beyond the lofty plateau occupied by such classic courtroom dramatists as Scott Turow and John Lescroart.” — Toronto Star
Stung
“William Deverell returns with another Arthur Beauchamp legal thriller: Timely! Nail-biting courtroom finish!” — Margaret Atwood

Also by William Deverell
FICTION
Needles
High Crimes
Mecca
The Dance of Shiva
Platinum Blues
Mindfield
Kill All the Lawyers
Street Legal: The Betrayal
Trial of Passion
Slander
The Laughing Falcon
Mind Games
April Fool
Whipped
Kill All the Judges
Snow Job
I’ll See You in My Dreams
Sing a Worried Song
Stung
NON-FICTION
A Life on Trial

Dedication
For Ecojustice Canada

Prologue
Dear Jacques,
Midtown Manhattan looks like a painted whore in December, the weather would freeze a polar bear’s nuts, and the Rangers just lost their fourth straight. What depresses me more is the thought of you lolling around in the tropical sunshine while I break my ass up here.
But I’m doing too well to kill myself. It turns out getting disbarred was the best thing that could have happened, career-wise. I just signed up this big horse for the Bruins, the agency flourishes, and life is fat — and now suddenly your whining letter lands on my desk. No, Jacques, I do not intend to advance you a “small tiding of faith” until your latest poems get published. Your mooching has inspired me with a more breathtaking idea, which doesn’t require you to suffer the mortifying shame of indebtedness to your oldest, dearest friend. When you sent me that last batch of verses, asking me to try to flog them, I started thinking — why not a literary sideline? So I have decided that instead of you having to grovel, I will personally advance you a couple of grand against royalties for the smash bestseller you are about to write.
I’m not talking poetry, which doesn’t sell even if you’re Shakespeare and you’ve been dead for five hundred years. This may hurt, Jacques, but I never thought you were much of a poet anyway. In fact, I found the shit you mailed me too depressing to read. Hymns to a Dying Planet? But you can turn out a phrase, and my idea is to have you rip off an old-fashioned thriller that I’ll flog to publishers as the work of a triple agent hiding in the tropics. Put the right ingredients in and the big houses will be flocking to the doorstep of the R.B. Rubinstein Agency, waving fistfuls of dead presidents.
One of those ingredients is blood. I want a body count. I want a two-fisted hero, not some whining patsy crippled with sorrow and woe like the schnockered poet who’s right now reading this letter. I’m thinking more James Bondish — maybe he’s hiding out in the tropics, only he can foil Dr. Zork’s plan to take over the world, and Zork is trying to blip him off.
I looked up the rules. You throw in a big red herring near the start. You invent a twist that comes at you like a slapshot. You create a kick-ass hero and a ravishing heroine with whom you ultimately engage in explicit sex. And you pay me my standard commission, no reduction for failed poets.
Are the girls still going topless at the far end of the beach? Someone better put a stop to that, some poor schlemiel could get a heart attack.
Give me an outline, a chapter.
Rocky

The Torrid Zone
-1-
Maggie Schneider stirred from a dream of balmy breezes on a tropical shore. She fought for the dream and lost it as she squinted out her window at the brittle crust on roofs and frozen front lawns. The sky was a murky mat, spewing snow that the wind whirled into white cyclones, setting them dancing on the street below.
Beyond, across the river, smoke was pumping from the chunky buildings of downtown Saskatoon: a pleasant-enough city were it not twenty degrees below zero and fifty-two degrees above the equator (much closer to the Arctic Circle).
As full wakefulness came, Maggie remembered with a jolt she would be serving just one more day and night under the tyrannical reign of this Saskatchewan winter, and then . . .
Costa Rica! Two weeks she would spend in a lush land where tires do not freeze square, where the tears brought on by the biting winds don’t freeze on your face.
An agent at Hub City Travel (“Escape from those winter blahs with our ticket to paradise”) had shown her a brochure: a mist-thick waterfall, a hummingbird in a poinciana, a breast-shaped boat-filled bay and its sweeping crescent of sandy beach. Seduced by these promises, she had signed on for four days and three nights in an exotic jungle retreat: the Eco-Rico Lodge. “A wilderness experience you’ll never forget,” though you are not likely to forget the thousand-dollar price tag, either.
She had found the tiny country in her atlas — squeezed between Panama and Nicaragua along a mountainous isthmus connecting the two American continents, with the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea lapping lovingly at its shores. Central America! Tropical jungle! Non-stop hot days and warm nights: two glorious weeks to inspire a novel of romance.
There, in the sticky heat of the tangled rain forest, Fiona (sassy, bright, and self-reliant) will find romance with Jacques (suave, cosmopolitan) in a seething epic to be called The Torrid Zone .
She powered herself to her feet, trotted to the shower, stood under it for several luxurious minutes. Maybe she would find a grass shack in Costa Rica; maybe she would never come back. She had paid her penance, surviving twenty-nine Saskatchewan winters. Her needs were simple: a pen and a pad and a piña colada. Maybe throw in Jacques.
In the meantime, Maggie must gird herself for the office C