Blue Rain

Dog tags dangling from the neck of a dead body in the Mojave desert provide L.A. Chronicle reporter Johnny Rose with his first clue that the strange doings afoot in his town may have their origins in the jungles of Southeast Asia. From this moment in Freadhoff's (Codename: Cipher) thriller, the terrors of Vietnam come ever closer. Rose's friend Pham Lich is terrified by the apparition of Kyle Loveless, an American pilot thought to have been killed in Laos but now dining in Lich's restaurant with a bad-news Special Forces captain from the old days. Lich's subsequent murder, the discovery that the captain has been making inquiries about Rose and the identification of the desert body as a POW all put Rose on the trail of a group of veterans trafficking with Asian drug lords. Meanwhile, the reporter is declared a suspect in Lich's murder and runs into trouble on his job when he refuses to accept the position of press secretary for Gordon Geld, the chemicals tycoon and publishing mogul who owns the Chronicle. Harassed by the LAPD and followed by Geld's goons, Rose uses his reporter's skills to connect the mysterious Special Forces captain to a chemical plant owned by Geld in the desert. Sleuthing around Geld's files and slumming in flea-bag hotels, Rose uncovers a dastardly plot motivated by political ambition and achieved through militaristic maneuverings. Though his novel relies on coincidence and plot devices, Freadhoff conjures up enough paranoia to chill readers, all the while offering an insider's take (he's a veteran journalist) on how a good reporter goes about digging out the facts, no matter what the obstacles. Agent, Matt Bialer. (Apr.)