Flat Spin is the first installment in David Freed’s acclaimed series featuring Cordell Logan, a sardonic pilot with dwindling savings and a shadowy past.

Based in California’s sunny Rancho Bonita, Cordell Logan is a flight instructor and aspiring Buddhist with a shadowy past whose attempt at a quiet(er) life is shattered when his ex-wife Savannah arrives unannounced on his doorstep. Her new husband, Arlo Echevarria—the man she left Logan for—has been murdered in Los Angeles.

Logan and Echevarria were once comrades-in-arms, members of a top-secret military assassination squad known as Alpha. Savannah begs Logan to tell the LAPD what he knows of Echevarria’s covert past to help detectives solve the slaying, but sharing that sort of information raises both ethical and practical concerns. After an attempt on Logan’s own life, it becomes clear that this goes deeper than he feared, and that solving the murder himself may be the only way to ensure his—and Savannah’s—safety.