Cape Disappointment (Thomas Black Series #12) »

Earl Emerson is the Shamus Award—winning author of the Thomas Black detective series, which includes The Million-Dollar Tattoo, Deception Pass, and Catfish Café, as well as several other novels, most recently Primal Threat, Firetrap, and The Smoke Room. A lieutenant in the Seattle Fire Department, he lives in North Bend, Washington.

www.EarlEmerson.com

A man and a woman, their coastal getaway interrupted, say goodbye on an isolated landing strip in Washington State. She then calls from the air. And he watches from the base of a lighthouse as the plane, with eleven people on board, plummets into the steely gray sea. The man remembering this tragic event is in a hospital room, the victim of a bombing weeks after the crash. In this extraordinary thriller by award-winning author Earl Emerson, Seattle private eye Thomas Black returns after more than a decade–and he must put together the shattered fragments of his life. His life and his country depend on it.


CAPE DISAPPOINTMENT


The bomb that nearly killed Thomas Black went off in a school gymnasium after a Senate candidate had spoken. Amid the carnage, Black nearly bled to death. But he survives–and enters a tunnel of dreams and hallucinations, oblivion and unconnected memories. People come and go from his hospital room. A beautiful woman kisses him. A madman’s rant echoes in his mind. Then, when Black–widower, hero, and private investigator–is released from the hospital, he faces the twin tragedies that have devastated his life, and the fact that his lovely wife Kathy is really gone for good.

Or is she? Thomas believes he sees Kathy–as a passenger in a passing truck. Her cell phone, which should be on the bottom of the sea, calls his in the middle of the night. And the explanations investigators give for the plane crash just don’t make sense.

Now, step by step, Black is beginning to understand what a paranoid, alcoholic former CIA hit man has been trying to tell him about the plane crash, about the death of areporter’s husband, about suspicious things that nobody ever gets around to questioning. Suddenly, Black is on the run, chased by mysterious people, caught in a web of personal and political lies and something even worse: a plot that is killing everyone it touches.

Brilliantly told and emotionally galvanizing, Cape Disappointment is a political thriller and a gut-wrenching tale of conspiracies–the kind that are too crazy to believe and too deadly to ignore.

Publishers Weekly

Last seen in Catfish Café(1998), Thomas Black finds his memory playing tricks on him at the start of Emerson's dark and disturbing 12th novel to feature the Seattle PI. As Black recuperates in the hospital after being severely wounded in an explosion, he can't remember if his lawyer wife, Kathy Birchfield, is alive or dead. Kathy was to have been a passenger on a chartered plane, along with Sen. Jane Sheffield, that crashed into the sea with no survivors. In flashbacks, Black and Birchfield work on opposing senatorial campaigns until the crash eliminates Birchfield and the blast injures Black. Twin brothers, Elmer "Snake" Slezak and Bert Slezak, play key roles-Snake protects Black; Bert, a former CIA sniper and confirmed conspiracy nut, tries to persuade the PI that the plane crash was no accident. Conspiracy buffs should enjoy this thriller with its references to real-life events like 9/11 that some consider coverups, while Thomas Black fans will welcome his return after a long hiatus. (Feb.)

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