Bird's-Eye View
Penzler Pick,August  2001:J.F. Freedman is a wonderful storyteller whose six previous novels  have been nothing less than compulsive page-turners. This, his latest, is no  different.Meet Fritz Tullis, lovable failure. He should be on top of the world. He comes  from one of the most prestigious families in Maryland and, until recently,  taught at the University of Texas. That all ended when he was discovered having  an affair with the wife of one of the university's most generous donors. Now  he's back on his mother's land living in a little shack, drinking too much, and  indulging in the local women.But Fritz is also an enthusiastic photographer who spends his early morning  hours trying to get rid of a hangover. He takes a small boat to the marshy areas  near Chesapeake Bay where he has been watching migrating birds, especially  Ollie, a whooping crane (an endangered species) who seems to have lost his way  and ended up with a group of sandhill cranes in the marshes of Maryland. Fritz  knows that he should be informing a wildlife preservation group about this lost  bird, but then the place would be overrun by activists, and there would go his  privacy.One morning as Fritz is watching Ollie he hears a small plane approaching the  runway just across the creek. The land belongs to his mother, so Fritz turns his  zoom lens towards the plane--and witnesses a murder. That night at his mother's  house, Fritz is introduced to the new owner of that piece of property, James  Roach, assistant secretary of state. From the moment he meets Roach, Fritz's  life is in turmoil. He also meets Maureen O'Hara, the ornithologist from Harvard  with the seductive name who just complicates his life further as he tries to  keep Ollie's presence a secret. But inBird's-Eye Viewnobody is quite  who they seem to be, and the reader is kept in suspense until the very last  page.--Otto Penzler--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.