Double Image - Softcover

Morrell, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747253498 ISBN 13: 9780747253495

Publisher: Headline Book Publications, 1998

Synopsis

He has walked through the valley of death and man’s depravity. Now war photographer Mitch Coltrane is trying to escape his memories. A haunting decades-old photograph of a woman pulls him into the mystery of a beautiful starlet during Hollywood’s golden age. But past and present collide. A living woman, eerily like the woman in the photograph, comes into his life. So does a killer—straight from the war hell that Coltrane survived. Deception, double identities, and murderous revenge will shatter his new life, and force Coltrane to perform the ultimate act of courage—not with a camera, but with a gun.

“A sizzling thriller that deftly and powerfully evokes the twisted scope of Los Angeles today. The story grabs you by the short hairs of your soul and your brain and does not let go. It’s a rich and obsessive novel.” —James Ellroy

“Fresh, inventive, gripping suspense. Morrell, an absolute master of the thriller, plays by his own rules and leaves you dazzled. I’ve been a Morrell fan for years—and now more than ever.” —Dean Koontz

“A thrilling combination of noir and powerful action.” —Donald E. Westlake

About this title

From the Back Cover

After a harrowing experience in Bosnia, war photographer Mitch Coltrane makes a vow. From now on, he will take only those pictures that celebrate life and document hope instead of despair. Then the horrors of his previous assignment return to threaten him, and Coltrane must seek refuge from the present in the past. Having uncovered an old, uncaptioned photograph of a hauntingly beautiful woman, Coltrane sets out to discover who the woman was, and why her photo was hidden in the vault of a world-famous art photographer. Soon he finds himself hopelessly obsessed with the woman in the photograph and slipping into a maze of deception and treachery. Surrounded by illusions of the past and present, Coltrane now must fight for his life in the world capital of make-believe: a decadent and deadly L.A....

About the Author

My father was killed during World War II, shortly after I was born in 1943. My mother had difficulty raising me and at the same time holding a job, so she put me in an orphanage and later in a series of boarding homes. I grew up unsure of who I was, desperately in need of a father figure. Books and movies were my escape. Eventually I decided to be a writer and sought help from two men who became metaphorical fathers to me: Stirling Silliphant, the head writer for the classic TV series "Route 66" about two young men in a Corvette who travel America in search of themselves, and Philip Klass (whose pen name is William Tenn), a novelist who taught at the Pennsylvania State University where I went to graduate school from 1966 to 1970. The result of their influence is my 1972 novel, First Blood, which introduced Rambo. The search for a father is prominent in that book, as it is in later ones, most notably The Brotherhood of the Rose (1984), a thriller about orphans and spies. During this period, I was a professor of American literature at the University of Iowa. With two professions, I worked seven days a week until exhaustion forced me to make a painful choice and resign from the university in 1986. One year later, my fifteen-year-old son, Matthew, died from bone cancer, and thereafter my fiction tended to depict the search for a son, particularly in Fireflies (1988) and Desperate Measures (1994). To make a new start, my wife and I moved to the mountains and mystical light of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where my work changed yet again, exploring the passionate relationships between men and women, highlighting them against a background of action as in the newest, Burnt Sienna. To give his stories a realistic edge, he has been trained in wilderness survival, hostage negotiation, executive protection, antiterrorist driving, assuming identities, electronic surveillance, and weapons. A former professor of American literature at the University of Iowa, Morrell now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Edition details

• Publisher: Headline Book Publications
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0747253498
• ISBN 13: 9780747253495
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384