Blown Away: A Novel of Suspense - Hardcover

G.M. Ford

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060874392 ISBN 13: 9780060874391

Publisher: William Morrow, 2006

Synopsis

With each riveting new thriller, author G.M. Ford garners more critical praise for the breakneck, revved-up, nonstop style that has catapulted him into the upper echelon of contemporary crime writers. Now he returns with his most harrowing novel to date—based on an incredible but true unsolved case—as he plunges his dark and complex protagonist, disgraced journalist Frank Corso, into a lethal morass of revenge and conspiracy.

The nightmare began a year ago with the curious and unfortunate death of a delivery driver—blown to pieces. With a little prodding from the media, the terror spread, burning a bloody swath from East Coast to West.

Bodies are piling up as a series of deadly bank robberies rocks the L.A. area. Where federal agencies see nothing but the random hand of a bomb-tossing lunatic, rogue journalist turned bestselling author Frank Corso sees the tracks of something more sinister—something with a motive and a message. And it's not going away.

Forced to work within the system, Corso and research assistant, Chris Andriatta, are never-theless ready to pull out all the stops to halt a time bomb of terror. But the closer they come to a maniac, the more a shocking and devastating truth comes to light—that the fuse to the horror that has killed many times over and will kill many times more may have been inadvertently lit by Frank Corso himself.

G.M. Ford delivers an edge-of-your-seat thriller that's gritty, harrowing, timely, and explosive—as past and present, fact and fiction crash head-on. You will be . . . blown away.

About this title

Reviews

In the gritty sixth Frank Corso novel (after 2005's No Man's Land), Ford makes clever use of an actual 2003 unsolved case to create a pulse-pounding plot capped by a dramatic and chilling ending. Corso, an investigative journalist whose promising career was derailed by a scandal, is sent by his publisher to a small Pennsylvania town to solve an unusual cold case. In an attempted bank robbery, a seemingly innocuous local, who presented his demands for cash with a bomb strapped around his neck, died when the device exploded. Corso is uninterested in the assignment until his initial inquiries lead to attempts on his life. The case takes on a whole new dimension when similar crimes begin to occur on the West Coast, leading the federal authorities to take a keen interest in the reporter's discoveries. While the eventual revelation of the motive behind the crimes is a little disappointing, this doesn't detract from the overall impact of this well-written and paced thriller.
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Blown Away

A Novel of SuspenseBy G.M. Ford

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2006 G.M. Ford
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060874392

Chapter One

"The head landed over there."

Corso turned and watched the guy trace an arc in the sky with his finger.

"Right where that red Honda is parked," the guy said.

"Where was Marino sitting when the bomb went off?" Corso asked.

This time the guy pointed to the area in front of Corso's boots. "Right there. See? There where the pavement's been patched."

"I don't see anything."

"You have to look close," the guy said. He pointed. "See the little rectangle there?"

Corso bent at the waist. In the gathering gloom, he couldn't make out the supposed patch in the pavement, so he dropped to one knee and used his hands. He found the outline with the tips of his fingers. Traced it. Maybe five feet by three. Done very neatly, as if by a landscaper rather than a road crew.

"Didn't even need to be fixed," the guy said. "Didn't have a mark on it."

Corso looked up. The guy was in his middle thirties, working on a potbelly. He needed a haircut almost as badly as the herringbone sport jacket needed a trip to the dry cleaners. Other than grooming problems, however, Carl Letzo seemed like a pretty nice fella . . . more or less what Corso had come to expect from small-town newspaper reporters. What he hadn't come to expect, however, was for small-town newspaper guys to meet him at the airport. Especially when he hadn't told anyone he was coming.

"It was like the spot had cancer or something," Carl said. "Something that needed to be cut out before it could spread. Something to be expunged . . . you know, so the body could get about its business."

Corso rose from the pavement. He dusted off his hands and looked around. Something about these places out on the edge. A sense of whiteness . . . a sense of the void . . . of something vast and impenetrable just beyond the horizon. He'd felt it before, many times, that sense of impermanence. Like the place was a line of demarcation rather than a home . . . a sentinel rather than a respite . . . like the only thing left to those who stayed behind was to witness the passing of the parade.

"So, Carl," Corso began, "I appreciate you bringing me down here and all, saved me a bunch of time, but ahhh . . . just for the record, how was it you knew I was flying into your fair hamlet here?"

"Dorry."

"Who's Dorry?"

"Your publicist."

"Ahhhhh." Corso exhaled. It all made sense now. He'd changed publishers since his last book. Taken more money than he once could have imagined and run like hell. Hadn't occurred to him they'd assign him a publicist. He made a mental note to call his new editor . . . Greg was it? . . . yeah . . . at night . . . at home.

"So . . . you were here when it happened?"

Carl pointed at the Bank of Commerce, in whose parking lot they now stood. "Right there by the corner of the building. That was as close as they'd let me get."

The one-story rectangle of a bank was only slightly more adorned than the pavement had been. The lack of pizzazz seemed determined to convey a sense that these people were not wasting your money, or theirs either, for that matter.

All that remained of the surrounding trees were the black trunks set in the frozen grass and, spread above the ground, the gnarly, arthritic remnants of branches, quivering in the early-evening breeze.

To the west, the sky was leaden, backlit, as if somewhere in the reaches of the heavens a long-shuttered window had been opened, announcing to the senses . . . before the first scent of salt air . . . before the first crab shack . . . announcing that terra firma was about to end and that, like it or not, Plan B was about to become the order of the day.

Corso checked his watch. Four-ten and the late-fall light was already slipping into the lake for the night. Out on the road, streetlights sputtered to life as traffic crept along. It was cold enough to snow. Cold enough to keep people indoors for long periods of time. Suicide weather.

Behind Carl, a forest green Acura slid across the lot, its studded tires snapping the bare pavement like castanets. Malingering remnants of dirty snow huddled beneath the shrubbery.

"I figured there'd be a lot more snow."

Carl nodded. "Usually is. Up until a few weeks ago, we had it piled halfway up the fences. Then we got a warm spell. Rained like crazy for a whole week. Melted everything."

"What was the weather like last year?"

Carl Letzo thought about it. "About like this. 'Cept snow on the ground. We got about six inches the night before." He looked around, seeing it all again in his mind's eye. "Pretty much business as usual. People around here don't let a little snow get in their way."

Corso gestured toward the back door of the bank. "So he comes out that door with the money."

Letzo nodded. "He's got the money in a white plastic bag," he said. "He doesn't get more than a coupla steps out the door and the cops grab him."

"He try to break away from the cops?"

Letzo shook his head. "That was right before I got here, but I don't think so. I've never heard anybody talk about him resisting."

"So what then?"

"From what I hear, he's wailing about how he's going to blow up if he doesn't follow the directions in the note. The cops are scared to be close to him, so they set him out in the parking lot and wait for the bomb squad to arrive."

"And?"

"That's when I got here." He pointed at the pavement. "He was sitting here on the ground . . . cross-legged."

"Doing what?"

"Crying. Begging for somebody to help him."

"And then?"

Letzo's eyes narrowed. "Kerblooie. The bomb went off. Blew parts of him all over the place."

Continues...

Excerpted from Blown Awayby G.M. Ford Copyright © 2006 by G.M. Ford. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060874392
• ISBN 13: 9780060874391
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 291