The Falling Man

By Carl Crowe

Off the coast of the Dominican Republic, an American salvage vessel happens on the coral-encrusted wreck of a Spanish treasure galleon. But the young ex-convict in charge of the venture appears distressed rather than elated by this remarkable find. The chain of events this discovery sets in motion will affect profoundly many people--none more so than Chester Elman, a young attorney in the San Francisco office of the SEC. For a government lawyer, Ches is a man with a past. Years ago he was drawn into the fatally miscarried attempt of his twin brother to escape from a Mexican prison and he carries a legacy of sorrow over that and another, equally tragic, loss. In an old house in the Berkeley Hills, he raises the six-year-old son of the woman who was his dead brother's beautiful, troubled lover.At the SEC, Ches investigates a global company that has become a media darling for its seeming ability to be both wildly profitable and socially enlightened. His superiors find it politically imperative to kill the matter but evidence mounts insistently of dark corners to its operations. Ches also pursues a treasure salvage company suspected of being more interested in bilking investors than finding a lost treasure galleon. He soon discovers a disturbing connection between it and his own past:"He read the man's name and felt a sudden disorientation, a wild slippage in time. Instantly, as if the last six years had never happened, he walked again into that drab and terrible house on a sun-bleached Los Angeles street. He followed, as before, a trail of sound--that slow lurching bang, like a shutter blown in the wind. And his eyes filled with the rust-on-white pattern that was, for him, a symbol of unfinished business that would never, in his life, be forgotten." The two investigations intertwine, marked by a series of cruel murders, and take him to Key West, the Cayman Islands and Southern Baja. They lead to astonishing discoveries:"He dipped his hand again into the bowl and this time pulled out a much larger object. When he'd rinsed it clean, he beheld an enrapturing sight. A gold necklace, intricately designed and studded with emeralds. Dozens of them, perfectly matched in size and color, with a pendant at the center twice the size of the other gems. It caught the flashlight beam and refracted it onto the kitchen wall in dancing streams of color."They involve him with a woman who tears to pieces the secure, conventional life he has built for himself and the boy: "Satisfied, she put her lips next to his ear and said, '"You know, you weren't actually half-bad. I thought it was going to take more, well, professionalism than it did."'He becomes the object of brutal violence: "When the nail entered his hand, Ches spasmed as if he'd touched a high-voltage wire. It was not done quickly. The man with the hammer missed several times, pounding the flesh under the bandage and reopening the wound. The hammer, slick with blood, slipped on the nail-head and the nail, as it tore through cartilage, made a sound from a butcher's table." And, finally, he and the terrified boy are taken as prisoners on a night flight over the Sea of Cortez from which they cannot expect to return.Carl Alan Crowe is the pen name of a a former U.S. government attorney whose publications include articles in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and CNN Online. He holds degrees from the University of California and Harvard Law School and has taught at Georgetown and other law schools. He lives in Berkeley, California.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1521706840
• ISBN13: 9781521706848
• Release Date: July 2017
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 445 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.6" x 1.1" x 6.7"