An Athlete in Winter
How far will you go when the past demands payment?
Coming home never ends well. After decades away, Mason James returns to the East Bay when his father, Max, is found half-dead in an Emeryville alley behind the Key Club. Max won’t talk. The police call it a mugging. Mason knows better.
The McKnights—family by blood and bond—built an empire that went legitimate long ago. Now someone is prying it open from the inside: identity theft, hacked systems, and a pressure campaign aimed at one prize—mineral-rich farmland Melvin McKnight refuses to sell. The man making the offer is Omer Sahin, a Turkish power broker with nightclub fronts, Russian muscle, and a deadline. His enforcer network reaches into the past: Victor Novikov at the Key, and Jason Riverton, the crooked ex-cop who once made Mason’s teenage life hell.
With Max’s health failing and Melvin hiding an early-onset Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Mason is forced back into the methods he swore off—surveillance, leverage, and violence—while fighting panic attacks, guilt, and a temper that has ruined lives before. Backed by a razor-smart tech ally and Midas McKnight, the one friend who knows his darkest history, Mason enters a cat-and-mouse war where every move is watched, every loyalty has a price, and “legit” is just another mask.
Like his first novel, “A Snow Leopard Named Midas,” S.L. Cook’s “An Athlete In Winter” is for readers who love the moral complexity of S.A. Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland, the hunter and hunted tension of Thomas Perry’s Vanishing Act, and the psychological depth of John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
“Cook’s writing style is sharp and immersive, making every scene feel cinematic. The pacing is relentless yet balanced, giving readers just enough time to breathe before diving into the next adrenaline-fueled moment.”
Barnes and Noble
“If you are a fan of mystery, thrill, grit, and close-to-real-life themes when reading, look no further than S.L. Cook’s masterpiece of a work.”
Goodreads
A Snow Leopard Named Midas
When survival demands restoring the very weapon you once abandoned, a reluctant warrior discovers that some battles never truly end.
After his girlfriend is kidnapped, brutalized, and left drugged in a filthy hotel, Midas McNight is forced to return to a persona he buried years before: A ruthless and lethal black bag operator known to a chosen few as The Snow Leopard.
But that was a long time ago, and Midas is not the same man. This wary and aging soldier now has no choice but to face a small army of former associates who want to eliminate him and everyone he cherishes.
“A Snow Leopard Named Midas” goes to the heart of the anxiety and fear now pervasive throughout not only the United States but beyond its borders as well. Told through flawed survivors committed to a war against apathy and fear, as well as enemies which, due to sheer numbers and organization, can never truly be overcome.
Those trying to make incremental improvements in a world where wrong people inevitably win.