Written Especially for the eReaderWhy should she fall in love with a man she defended in court/ Does she know he’s a CIA assassin? Does she know he has orders to kill the President? Does she know she will die if he fails? What else doesn’t she know?Roland Sand has killed two government operatives sent to execute him. He is arrested and represented in court by a beautiful young public defender, … public defender, Eleanor Trent. Their eyes connect. So do their hearts, but both keep their feeling buried deep inside them.
Eleanor does not know that Sand is an assassin for a rogue intelligence agency that sells its deadly services to foreign nations as well as to its own country. He has angered his chief, the one-eyed Bohemian, by refusing to kill an accountant who accidentally saw the details of a top-secret mission. Sand sees no reason why an innocent man should die.
The Bohemian’s agents kidnap Sand and take him from the Durango, Colorado, jail. He is given one chance to redeem himself. He must carry out the assignment to assassinate the President of the United States. It is a mission sanctioned from inside the United States government.
Eleanor is furious, and she is frightened. She has lost cases before. But never has she lost a client. In desperation, he calls Navy SEAL Commander John Nickols to help her track down the missing Roland Sand. She handled a case for one of Nickols’s friends years earlier, and he said she could count on him if she ever needed him.
At Midway Airport, Sand awaits the arrival of Air Force One. The President comes down the steps, and Sand sees Eleanor in the greeting committee. He is told, “Kill the President or we kill the lady.” He has only a second to make up his mind. And Nickols knows, if necessary, he must kill Sand to save the President.
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An intense read!
This was an easy to read action packed thriller! The writing was very descriptive, leaving little to the imagination, reminding me of an episode of Dragnet with Joe Friday narrating. I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to reading more work by this talented author!
A thriller with brilliant writing and no holds barred action!
Caleb Pirtle’s “Lovely Night to Die” is storytelling at its finest! This high stakes thriller never stops moving, pushing the reader to turn the page. Crisp, tight dialogue and text. No words wasted. It’s exactly what’s needed to maintain a constant state of tension throughout. The continual sense of impending doom was so well done that it kept me wondering about Roland Sand’s chances. Sands, an assassin, is a main character. I knew he was supposed to survive to the end of the book, but at times, I was so engrossed in the story that I wondered if he’d make it to the end of the chapter.
Perfectly worded prose garnishes the in-between spaces, the times when the action pauses briefly. The pauses are short, but they reveal a snapshot of what’s needed to effortlessly bring the reader into a scene. “The falling snow reached out and swallowed him as if he were only a ragged image on a frame of black and white film.”
The story’s love affair between Eleanor and Sand is fragile and beautifully described. “A soft and lingering silence, Eleanor feared, was all they would ever have together, silence and the specter of death.
Pirtle writes with such touching images that we can’t help but wish that there’s hope for Eleanor and Sand. Yet, the difficulties involved in their relationship make us thankful that we don’t live in their extremely dangerous world. And that dangerous world is portrayed vividly throughout the book.
I can’t say enough about Pirtle’s brilliant style of writing and his ability to give readers a no holds barred action.
‘Lovely Night to Die’ is my introduction to the novellas featuring Roland Sand, the Quiet Assassin, by Caleb Pirtle III. I was first impressed by the style of writing that drives the action like pounding a nail through hardwood. It’s a very familiar style; it is one I adopt in my own thriller novels. Pirtle’s eye for the poetic is ever-present in his descriptions that instantly paint a full picture of the scene for all the reader’s senses, without needing to go into further detail – “The timbered ridges were dark bruises against the sky, and the stars had been wiped away by a thunderhead that promised bad weather”.
Sand is a killer working for a one-eyed Bohemian the boss of the mysterious Association assigned to eliminate a low-ranking bureaucrat. Sand tracks him down and learns a secret he should never know. That makes him into a marked man with professional assassins from his own organization tasked to take him out. And that is the start of this fast-paced, thrilling adventure which demanded to be read in one sitting.
Pirtle’s taut, punchy prose takes the reader on an eventful journey against apparently unsurmountable odds and choices that have no good outcome, until he comes face to face with the hardest choice he has ever had to make. Great characters, superb pacing, intriguing storytelling. Recommended for fans of solid action thrillers everywhere.