Lovely Night to Die: The Quiet Assassin
by Caleb Pirtle III

Description: Why 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, 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.

Review: 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 thriller!

——————————-
Caleb Pirtle’s website. You can also visit him on Facebook and on Twitter.