ENTERTAINMENT REALM

Voodoo Ridge by David Freed. Publisher: The Permanent Press (May 2014). Mystery/ Thriller. Hardcover. 288 pages. ISBN 978-1-57962-355-5.

“A man doesn’t do for his government what I did, for as long as I did it, without living in constant fear of retaliation. The fear is with you every day and every night. You constantly scan your surroundings, situational awareness on over drive assessing the body language of strangers whose path you cross and whether they pose a threat, until paranoia becomes muscle memory.”

Third in the Cordell Logan Mystery series. My first. Logan’s an intriguing character with his Buddhist studies (though NO ONE can truly be a Buddhist and NOT be a vegan. Buddhists DO NOT KILL unless threatened.), his past experience with counter-intelligence and his current job as a flight instructor. All this gives him insight into cases and the wherewithal to get to places many can’t very easily access. In Voodoo Ridge, Logan and his ex-wife decide they’re going to marry for the second time up at Lake Tahoe. They fly in for the weekend when Logan notices an abandoned plane in the mountains. It turns out to be an abandoned government issued 1959 plane that had been carrying dangerous cargo. A deep mystery involving secret weapons linked to a CIA weapons testing unravels with which Logan becomes involved.

Not sure that Logan has a cross-sectional appeal. So many sexist comments and macho elements cloud a rather strong thriller concept. At one point Logan says: “He’d kidnapped my woman, terrorized her gentle soul.” Yeah yeah Logan. Get over yourself. YOUR woman? NO woman, no person is YOUR property. Icky. Strike. Then at another point he goes to a library and has an interaction with a female librarian: “Her smile was one part professional and about three parts lonely.” Oh David Freed. Can you BE any more clichéd and sexist? Strike. While Voodoo Ridge is a decent mystery and I wanted to see what the strange cargo was in the plane, I don’t care enough about Cordell Logan to keep reading his mystery series. He’s got too much of the guy-rescuing-pretty-and-helpless-women-ego.

RATING: ***/5 stars

–review by Amy Steele

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from The Permanent Press.

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