ODYSSEY'S END

By  Pennell Paugh

January 3, 2024 (San Diego) – Odyssey's End  is the tenth book in the Rick Cahill series by local author Matt Coyle.  Private investigator Rick Cahill lives in the San Diego region and as in the series’ other books, he takes the reader on real streets and neighborhoods.in  He accepts a lost-person assignment from a man he knows is a killer. The murderer is also connected to others from Rick’s dark past. Immediately, Rick’s life and those of his family members are threatened.

Here’s a sample of writing from the book:

I hadn’t seen Peter Stone in five years. Not since the night he saved my life. When he’d wielded a shotgun with deadly efficiency. Five years before that, he’d tried to kill me with a handgun. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so lucky the first time if he’d had a shotgun.

Stone had changed a lot since the night he’d blown away two assassins in his lair up in the hills above La Jolla.

His gray hair still spiked to a widow’s peak dagger point on his long forehead, but now the dagger started farther up. His eyes still beamed menace, but they’d lost their soulless shark void. Still a predator, even with his Parkinson palsy, but less dangerous. His once lead, athletic frame, now thin and slumped and leaning on an ivory-handled cane. As if the sum of a lifetime of malicious machinations finally weighed him down. Pulled at him.

Like everyone who’s ever walked the earth but one, Stone couldn’t escape the degradations of time. It doesn’t matter how much money you have or how narcissistic your behavior. Time erodes us all.

Hired to find his client’s daughter, Rick does the job to protect the person and not to expose her to his client. In his last few books, Rick’s choice of profession conflicts with his desire to have a family. Meanwhile, he continues to deal with a deteriorating brain condition that he received on the job.

Unlike some other popular mystery and thriller writers, Coyle has the series’ main character, Rick, age and his past is carried into the future, book to book. The constant threats to his wife and child drives his wife away. On top of that, his threatening behavior due to his injured brain also scares his wife.

Will he succeed in overcoming two very dangerous foes and succeed in reuniting with his? And is Rick strong enough to be the main character in any more books by Coyle?

Coyle lives in San Diego, where he says he is writing something completely new.

He knew he wanted to be a crime writer when his father gave him The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler when Coyle was a young teen. His books have won the Anthony, Shamus, Lefty, Authors on the Air Book of the Year, Ben Franklin Silver, Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Silver, and San Diego Book Awards. He was named the Mystery Writer of the Year for 2021 by the San Diego Writers Festival.