The Laughing Falcon

William Deverell

Aug 2010 · McClelland & Stewart

About this ebook

William Deverell’s 11th novel is an adventure thriller layered with startling twists. All that Maggie Schneider, a romance writer from wintry Saskatoon, wants is a glorious holiday in the tropics and maybe a little real romance to reawaken her creative juices. What she gets instead, soon after she arrives in Costa Rica, is a nasty surprise. First she is robbed of most of her money. Then she is kidnapped and held for ransom somewhere in the steamy jungle by self-styled revolutionaries led by a charismatic man with a mysterious background. Kidnapped along with Maggie is the vivacious wife of a U.S. senator who has presidential ambitions.

While the two women learn to deal with their captors, Jacques Cardinal, a jaded eco-tour guide who is desperately seeking to free himself from the demons of his past, undertakes a daring undercover rescue mission.

Comical and fast-paced – and drawn from true events – The Laughing Falcon transports readers to the lush rainforest of Costa Rica, where the author himself has lived for much of the last 20 years.


From the Hardcover edition.

About the author

William Deverell’s first novel, Needles, won the $50,000 Seal Award, and, since then, he has published one work of non-fiction, Fatal Cruise, and ten further novels, including Trial of Passion, winner of the Hammett Prize for literary excellence in crime writing and Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel. Deverell created the popular CBC Television series Street Legal and recreated its characters in a novel by that title. He is a founding member and past-president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, a member of PEN Canada, the Screen Writers Guild, and has twice been chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada. He winters in Costa Rica and spends his summers on Pender Island in B.C.