The Last Goodbye » (Abridged)

Reed Arvin grew up on a cattle ranch in rural Kansas. After a successful career as a music producer in Nashville, Arvin began writing full-time. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

From the hot new suspense writer critics predict will have Grisham fans "switching their allegiance midstream" comes a thrilling tale of love, betrayal and murder set on the mean streets and in the sleek society haunts of Atlanta...

Sleeping with a client's gorgeous girlfriend may have been the gutsiest move in Jack Hammond's formerly booming law career, but it wasn't the smartest. Booted from his elite law firm, Jack now scrapes by as a court-appointed attorney, his client list a revolving door of small-time drug offenders and petty thieves.

When his friend - a computer whiz and former addict who'd brought his life back from the brink - is found dead in his apartment, Jack knows something is very wrong. Where the cops see just another overdose, Jack sees a murder. Investigating the case, he learns that his friend was obsessed with a beautiful singer - who also happens to be half of the most popular power couple in Atlanta.

Talented and privileged, the...

Publishers Weekly

"As usual, the story begins with a woman crying." So says Atlanta lawyer Jack Hammond in this mesmerizing thriller about a good man caught in a web of bad love and murder. Beautiful client Violeta Ramirez is doing the crying on behalf of her dope-dealer boyfriend when Jack tumbles so hard for her his high-flying legal career is grounded and Violeta ends up dead. Two years later, Jack is working out of his one-man law office fishing for clients at the bottom of the criminal pool when he begins investigating the suspicious overdose death of his old college pal, Doug Townsend. With the help of a local hacker, Nightmare, Jack unlocks Doug's computer and stumbles into a quagmire involving the deaths of eight hepatitis C patients who were all enrolled in an experimental drug trial gone horribly wrong. Doug was also strangely obsessed with beautiful African-American opera singer Michele Sonnier, as is Jack after one look at her photos and a night at the opera. That her husband is the billionaire CEO of a local drug firm with its own hep C drug makes the liaison even more dangerous. After finding the disgraced researcher who headed the botched drug trial, Jack and his lowlife helpers begin to make real headway in solving the case. Even though melancholy, wisecracking Jack is a lawyer, this isn't a legal thriller so much as a knight-in-shining armor tale with the hero cast in the mold of the great Travis McGee. It's not Grisham that Arvin (The Will) should be compared to, but the incomparable John D. MacDonald. Those readers who value intelligence, fine writing and action will find it all in this outstanding novel. 100,000 first printing. (Feb. 17) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.