Frank Pavlicek

Thirteen years ago, Frank Pavlicek left the NYPD under less than ideal circumstances. Now, the divorced father of a teenage daughter, he works as a private investigator in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he indulges his passion for falconry - and tries to live outside the shadow of his past. Frank is hunting with his red-tailed hawk Armistead, when he finds it. A teenage boy's body - barely concealed behind a pile of brush. But what Frank finds in the dead boy's wallet is even more disturbing.

Ex-cop and avid falconer Frank Pavlicek is hired by the daughter of a philandering Virginia congressman to find her missing twin sister. Is her disappearance related to her disintegrating relationship with her boyfriend? Or is it somehow connected to her ambitious father’s reelection campaign, a tawdry sex scandal, and a hit-and-run accident that happened 20 years ago? Pavlicek’s investigation unearths long-buried secrets that someone would like to keep six feet under...along with the PI’s corpse.

An expert falconer is shot in the back in the wilds of West Virginia. The police believe he was the victim of a hunting accident, but PI Frank Pavlicek, a falconer himself, isn’t buying the story. Beatings, bombings, warnings from the FBI, and the arrest of his best friend on trumped-up charges only strengthen Pavlicek’s resolve to follow a bloody trail of lies and corpses that leads to a chilling terrorist conspiracy.