The Last Goodbye: A Novel

When a down-on-his-luck attorney gets mixed up with a gorgeous singer with a secret past, it results in a volatile tale of love, betrayal and murder in the tradition of Richard North Paterson and other bestselling authors.

Jack Hammond is a man haunted by the sins of his past. Once a member of a white-shoe law firm, he lost his once-promising career because of a transgression with a beautiful female client. Now he works out of a seedy office in downtown Atlanta. The only income he can count on is as the court-appointed attorney to the dregs of the court system. When his friend-a former addict and computer whiz who'd turned his life around-is found dead in his apartment with a syringe stuck in his arm, Jack knows there's something very wrong. In his attempt to get to the bottom of Doug's murder, Jack is drawn into the spellbinding world of a gorgeous black opera singer with whom Doug had been secretly in love.

As the story deepens, Hammond gets pulled into the worlds of high-tech, biological research, big business, and high society. Arvin pulls all these threads together in riveting fashion.

Reed Arvin's new novel introduces an unforgettable hero whose flawed humanity and wry humour will keep readers rooting for him, and a fast-paced story with enough twists and turns to keep readers turning the pages.

When a down-on-his-luck attorney gets mixed up with a gorgeous singer with a secret past, it results in a volatile tale of love, betrayal and murder in the tradition of Richard North Paterson and other bestselling authors.

Jack Hammond is a man haunted by the sins of his past. Once a member of a white-shoe law firm, he lost his once-promising career because of a transgression with a beautiful female client. Now he works out of a seedy office in downtown Atlanta. The only income he can count on is as the court-appointed attorney to the dregs of the court system. When his friend-a former addict and computer whiz who'd turned his life around-is found dead in his apartment with a syringe stuck in his arm, Jack knows there's something very wrong. In his attempt to get to the bottom of Doug's murder, Jack is drawn into the spellbinding world of a gorgeous black opera singer with whom Doug had been secretly in love.

As the story deepens, Hammond gets pulled into the worlds of high-tech, biological research, big business, and high society. Arvin pulls all these threads together in riveting fashion.

Reed Arvin's new novel introduces an unforgettable hero whose flawed humanity and wry humour will keep readers rooting for him, and a fast-paced story with enough twists and turns to keep readers turning the pages.

Publishers Weekly

"As usual, the story begins with a woman crying." So says Atlanta lawyer Jack Hammond in this mesmerizing thriller about a good man caught in a web of bad love and murder. Beautiful client Violeta Ramirez is doing the crying on behalf of her dope-dealer boyfriend when Jack tumbles so hard for her his high-flying legal career is grounded and Violeta ends up dead. Two years later, Jack is working out of his one-man law office fishing for clients at the bottom of the criminal pool when he begins investigating the suspicious overdose death of his old college pal, Doug Townsend. With the help of a local hacker, Nightmare, Jack unlocks Doug's computer and stumbles into a quagmire involving the deaths of eight hepatitis C patients who were all enrolled in an experimental drug trial gone horribly wrong. Doug was also strangely obsessed with beautiful African-American opera singer Michele Sonnier, as is Jack after one look at her photos and a night at the opera. That her husband is the billionaire CEO of a local drug firm with its own hep C drug makes the liaison even more dangerous. After finding the disgraced researcher who headed the botched drug trial, Jack and his lowlife helpers begin to make real headway in solving the case. Even though melancholy, wisecracking Jack is a lawyer, this isn't a legal thriller so much as a knight-in-shining armor tale with the hero cast in the mold of the great Travis McGee. It's not Grisham that Arvin (The Will) should be compared to, but the incomparable John D. MacDonald. Those readers who value intelligence, fine writing and action will find it all in this outstanding novel. 100,000 first printing. (Feb. 17) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Reed Arvin grew up on a cattle ranch in rural Kansas. After a successful career as a music producer in Nashville, Arvin began writing full-time. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.