The Red Widow - Furlong, T. Castle

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Résumé :
The Red Widow is a fast-paced mystery thriller that draws heavily on the author's 37 years working in the chaos of a dying American newspaper business. As the subtitle says, the book is A Story of Journalism, Treachery, Betrayal and Murder in the Land Down Under. Kirkus Reviews calls the novel a well-plotted thriller that will keep readers engrossed to the very end. The narrative takes place over 15 years, starting in the days just prior to 9/11/01. On center stage at the start is an unhappy reporting couple stationed in Sydney, Australia for the mythical New York Herald. The duo-Angela and Rafer Flanagan-is known to their editors in New York City as the 'Tandem Couple From Hell.' Their loathing for each other (and occasional lust) knows few limits. Her correspondent career is ascendant, his is on the rocks after winning a Pulitzer Prize early in his foreign reporting career. His drug of choice is alcohol, hers is cocaine. The Flanagans are in New York area on home leave when the terrorists strike the World Trade Center. Rafer is supposed to be in an interview at the top of the north tower when the first plane hits at 8:46 on that nightmarish morning. He isn't there--and that's how the mystery begins. The narrative bounces from America to Australia and back again-from steamy Washington D.C. to even steamier Darwin at the very top of the Aussie west coast. The chase is on for the Red Widow (Angela). In hot pursuit are reporters, editors, mobsters, gang members, local cops, federal cops and a takeover tycoon poised to pounce on the carcass of the Herald. The climax plays out near Darwin where the fearsome salt-water crocodiles rule the waterways and mudflats. Entertaining. Educational. Authentic. The Red Widow is all three....

Biographie:
T. Castle Furlong - whose journalism byline was Tom Furlong - is still an ink-stained wretch at heart, and proud of it. Now retired, he spent nearly all of his W2 years in American newspaper journalism, starting as a cub reporter on the violent streets of Chicago's South Side in 1971 and ending as the political editor supervising the 2008 presidential election for the Los Angeles Times. The third son of a Chicago newspaperman with a similar byline, Furlong is a proud honors graduate of Denison University in Granville, Ohio and a military veteran and ex-naval officer who served tours of duty in Europe. Florida and Virginia during the height of the Vietnam War. He and his second wife, a retired government intelligence official, have five adult children between them. They live on a lake outside Minneapolis with their dog Lucy, a sweet border collie rescue who loves all humans, dogs not so much. Furlong is hard at work on another novel, this one featuring super blogger Stella Ophelia Steele (SOS) as she wages war on the corruption, chaos and incompetence that is modern-day Washington D.C.