This thriller has it all: dark secrets, family, emotion, and a cast of characters that is outstanding. It is hard to put down as the action and suspense continues page after page. I have to admit that I didn't see the end coming, but it was so very fitting. everyone in the story is a character in depth. Relations have improved between Frank and his daughter Nicole, but they seem to stay the same with the local police. In addition to the action and suspense, the byplay between the characters, both friend and foe, is very entertaining. A great well-written story that leaves you hungering for more.

A great read has everything you want in a book. Murder, sex, abduction & lies. Can Frank find the girl before she lands up dead. Frank is a PI that is hired to find a young girl's sister but the plot thickens and so many lies & secrets are revealed and what is the truth? A nice paced story what was fun too read never a dull moment.

Frank once again is drawn into a family affair when the daughter of a high profile senator is missing and he is hired by her twin sister to find out what happened to her. Who has kidnapped her? Who has murdered her is the ongoing question. With a twist of the investigator becoming the investigated, you will fly through words with a pounding heart, trying to second guess the outcome--but you won't! Awesome suspense as Frank discovers the secrets that have been hidden.

Brash Books claim to publish the best crime novels in existence, and I'm beginning to agree with them. Of the three novels I've read from them so far, two of them I've given a five star rating. A Killing Sky is five star material to me. The story is the second in a series that follows ex-cop now turned private investigator Frank Pavlicek. This time he's hired by the daughter of a Virginia Congressman to find her missing twin sister, as she went missing after saying she was going to drive over to her boyfriend's dorm and break up with him. With only a few leads to pursue, such as a seemingly unrelated hit-and-run that occurred 20 years ago, it's up to Frank to find the missing twin before it's too late.

Political scandals are far from uncommon, so it should be no surprise that Congressman Drummond himself has been caught up in a few. He's had a handful of affairs and even nearly raped a woman, although the public eye doesn't know that. So when one of his daughters go missing, all eyes point to him as the suspect. Did he get rid of her to hide something, or was it the workings of someone else?

It's nice to have things be switched up when I read crime novels - sometimes I'll read a legal thriller, a cop thriller, or, in this case, as told from a private investigator. A Killing Sky was a greatly told story. The seemingly unrelated events turned up related, all thanks to Frank's sleuthing to prove it. I was on the tip of my toes the whole time, reading along to see what the current scenario would lead to. I haven't read any of the other novels in the Frank Pavlicek series yet, but I can guarantee you that I will be soon. Straka writes with such a captivating style that it's difficult to stop reading.

I only took a star away because I'm not into the whole "political" vibe. Other than that, a great PI series and a great publisher. Highly recommended. (Amazon reviewed).

This is no.6 in the PI series about Frank Pavlicek and his sidekick Toronto.

I found that there were lots of different elements in this story with lots of clues but also lots of hidden motives that you don’t discover until some way into the book/story. I did really enjoy the story and the style of the writing and shall read more. I give it 4 stars.

As it happens the author -Strada - is a falconer and so he makes his detective Pavlicek one too. The detective’s hawk is called Armistead and is a red-tailed hawk. Not a familiar type of hawk to us British so I needed to look it up. Note the pun on the title here with hawks flying down to kill from the sky...

It seems that as is common with hawks, the female is the larger bird and that it mates with a tiercel - which means 1/3 in old French as the male is 1/3 of the size of the female.

In the book several types of hawks or birds of prey are mentioned and here is a short list - I hope I haven’t missed any: Info and photos mainly from http://www.britishfalconersclub.co.uk/

Red tailed hawk: The Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) is a bird of prey, one of three species colloquially known in the United States as the “chickenhawk, It is one of the largest members of the genus Buteo in North America, typically weighing from 690 to 1600 grams (1.5 to 3.5 pounds) and measuring 45–65 cm (18 to 26 in) in length, with a wingspan from 110 to 145 cm (43 to 57 in). The Red-tailed Hawk displays sexual dimorphism in size, with females averaging about 25% heavier than males.red-tailed-hawk

Goshawk: The Northern Goshawk (pronounced /ˈɡɒs.hɔːk/, from Old English gōsheafoc, “goose-hawk”), Accipiter gentilis, is a medium-large bird of prey in the family Accipitridae. The Goshawk has long been the favourite hunting bird here in the UK. The Goshawks from southern and central Europe tend to be smaller in size and flying weight than birds from areas like Finland and Russia.goshawk

Peregrine: Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus), also known as the Peregrine, and historically as the “Duck Hawk” in North America, is a cosmopolitan bird of prey in the family Falconidae. It is a large, crow-sized falcon, with a blue-gray back, barred white underparts, and a black head and “moustache”. It can reach speeds over 320 km/h (200 mph) in a stoop, making it one of the fastest creatures on the planet. As is common with bird-eating raptors, the female is much bigger than the male.peregrine

Gyrfalcon: The Gyrfalcon (pronounced /ˈdʒɜrfɔːlkən/ or /ˈdʒɜrfælkən/; also spelled gerfalcon) Falco rusticolus is the largest of the falcon species. gyr

Eagle: eagle

American eagles of course are wonderful large birds. I have been lucky enough to see them myself in Florida when I went to the space shuttle area and they were perching on almost every post..

Sharp-skinned hawk: sharp skin

sharp-shinned_hawk

Woodland Accipiters: Within the Accipitridae family, the Eurasian sparrowhawk is a member of the large genus Accipiter, which consists of small to medium-sized woodland hawks. Most of the Old World members of the genus are called sparrowhawks or goshawks. sparrowhawk

Sparrowhawks will kill small birds as well as pigeons etc and often live in urban areas as do peregrines now. We have had a sparrowhawk nesting for many years two roads across from me, and my university was one of the first places in London that peregrines were spotted nesting on a window ledge on a tower block.

Now there was also mention of Saratoga water which also intrigued me. but in fact it turned out to be just a brand of spring water...

The age of the writing / writer was unfortunately shown when there mention of technology after all floppy disks have never been compatible with cell phones and certainly not a pocket sized cell phone. Maybe he was referring to stick drives? Or the very small types of hard drive storage that can be hidden in key fobs and so on. No computer - except those in museums still have floppy drives! And also file deletion is never really complete as our computer hackers/experts in retrieval will tell you. This is why so many firms who delete incriminating emails find themselves in court when those files are actually retrieved.

In youth we learn, in age we understand Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach was an Austrian who has many famous quotes.

Nationality: Austrian Type: Novelist Born: September 13, 1830 Died: March 12, 1916

Free-Flowing Thriller with a Touch of Falconry, 27 Aug. 2015

I love this author’s books. Cassidy Drummond asks PI Frank Pavlicek to find her twin sister Cartwright. She disappeared on the same night that the twins returned from a trip to Japan. Frank at first thinks that Cassidy is actually playing a practical joke on him. Why would the daughter of Congressman Tor Drummond not go to her own father to report that her sister is missing? He changes his mind when she shows him an old newspaper cutting she found in Cartwright’s suitcase. Why would Cartwright be interested in a newspaper cutting relating to a car accident in which two people, George and Norma Paitley were killed? Could he have something to do with his own daughter’s abduction?

These are just some of the questions that he and his former ex-homicide partner, Jake Toronto need to find answers for, and quickly because the longer Cartwright is missing, the bigger the probability is that they may end up only discovering her body.

This is my second encounter with Frank Pavlicek and hopefully not my last. Andy Straka manages to tell a story full of intrigue and seemingly impossible dead ends. His words seem to flow like a stream running over cobbled stones. He has a very special talent for managing to tell quite a dark story in such an easy fashion. I also love the bits that he manages to include about falconry. They add a touch of nature to an otherwise urban setting. Somehow, Andy’s own love for falconry, I think, is what enables him to tell a story with a depth that very few authors manage.—Treebeard Rating: Five Stars.

A gripping thriller with the addition of Falconry that makes it enjoyable and interesting in the grand tradition of thrillers. . Frank Pavlicek is a private detective investigating a disappearance of a twin sister among family secrets, congressional depravities. and murder. It is intelligent writing with well rounded characters.. The action is non stop. I highly recommend A Killing Sky for everyone that enjoys suspenseful thrillers. Thank you for the advance reading copy Brash Books.