The Cadillac Cowboy: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: An Old Warrior Gets Back in the Saddle Again
Review: Langford "Ford" Morgan has a nice life in Costa Rica. He's got the perfect girl, good bank account, healthy business. The perfect retirement. He's ex-CIA, perfectly happy to be out of the wars, perfectly content. Then he gets word from his ex-wife that her son by her first marriage is in jail for shooting his father. The man isn't dead, but the son is being held without bail. She wants Ford to come back to the States and prove her son is innocent.

He's not back in Santa Barbara long before he's in bed with the ex. But he quickly realizes it's a mistake when he meets the first hubby's mistress, she could be the love of his life, of course he's still got the current girl and the mistress is married and doesn't want anything to do with him.

Someone takes another shot at first hubby and is killed by a stranger in a cowboy hat who drives a Cadillac with a steer's horns on the hood. However the cops now let the son out of the can, as he couldn't have been involved in the second shooting. Mommy wants Ford to go home now, but he's got the mistress on the mind, along with a feeling of unease about a job not finished.

He finds out first hubby bought a lumber mill and is clear cutting the red woods. He believes there is a connection, meets a beautiful tree hugger, who wants to stop the raping and pillaging of the forest. The mistress spurns him again, but there is that tree hugger and of course the perfect Costa Rican girl and enough bad guys to shake a stick at.

Michael Collins has written still another mystery that will have you burning the midnight oil. It's just too gosh darned bad that they are so hard to get now. Somebody really out to make his books available again.

Ken Douglas, Underpaid Writer