What do you think?
Rate this book
Flying Dark
"It took me by surprise. The flight's thematic significance and the aerial imagery coupling with Hunter's inner landscape kept me aloft—and terrified."
—Jennifer Hegeman
Aviator Charles Lindbergh’s aw-shucks schtick is a mask for a monster who destroys strangers and loved ones with equal indifference.
Hunter makes a fortune exposing fraudsters. When Hunter stumbles across the corpse of his German teacher on his old reformatory grounds, he’s certain he is onto something evil and becomes drawn into the mystery.
Unsure who his own father is, Hunter is no angel himself. A former “black ops” military officer, he knows what he has to do to get the job done, no matter the cost.
Nightmares, hallucinations, and fragments of grisly memories knock on the door of his subconscious. Even the stage prop “Old Sparky” in his new lover’s lurid Grand Guignol connects a deadly circuit in Hunter.
Orisa cards warn of air disaster. Brainy Pia offers a path out of his disintegration. Traveling the globe—Paris, Berlin, Geneva, and London—Hunter can’t resist the magnetic scene south of New York where the Crime of the Century once played out.
Hunter is falling through the universe’s trap door. He’s headed for hell–unless he can redeem himself with one final flight.
—Jennifer Hegeman
Aviator Charles Lindbergh’s aw-shucks schtick is a mask for a monster who destroys strangers and loved ones with equal indifference.
Hunter makes a fortune exposing fraudsters. When Hunter stumbles across the corpse of his German teacher on his old reformatory grounds, he’s certain he is onto something evil and becomes drawn into the mystery.
Unsure who his own father is, Hunter is no angel himself. A former “black ops” military officer, he knows what he has to do to get the job done, no matter the cost.
Nightmares, hallucinations, and fragments of grisly memories knock on the door of his subconscious. Even the stage prop “Old Sparky” in his new lover’s lurid Grand Guignol connects a deadly circuit in Hunter.
Orisa cards warn of air disaster. Brainy Pia offers a path out of his disintegration. Traveling the globe—Paris, Berlin, Geneva, and London—Hunter can’t resist the magnetic scene south of New York where the Crime of the Century once played out.
Hunter is falling through the universe’s trap door. He’s headed for hell–unless he can redeem himself with one final flight.
326 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 27, 2023
6 people want to read
About the author
Colin W. Sargent
5 books40 followersOn the 2023 U.S. release of Red Hands
Hunt them down!
Heedless, headstrong, and headlong love. Who knew it would doom her country, too? Intelligent, stylish Iordana wasn’t interested in communist strategies while she enjoyed spectacular privilege–unimaginable to the 20 million souls living under the iron fist of a dictatorship ruled by a murderous family she chose to marry into.
But as a member of the elite Nomenclatura during Romania's cool 1960s, she had to have her Valentin. Just as she rose in the Ceausescu clan over her parents’ objections, so she fell when the murderous dictator and his criminal partner were taken down.
“Death to the Dracu grandson” rang through the subways. An angry world chased her and her son in an effort to wipe the name Ceausescu off the face of the earth. They hunted her from Bucharest to Israel to Canada to closer than you think. She escaped to the other side of the world, only to find herself branded an illegal alien in a quiet suburb on the coast of Maine.
Where to go? Where to hide? How will he even register for school? A tiny town in America will have to do for now.
On The Boston Castrato, 2017
One of the inspirations for my writing The Boston Castrato is a recovered memory. Cleaning out my basement, I ran into a battered report card from the Ledgemere Country Day School in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. "After a very rocky start, Colin's behavior has improved and is now more in line with the norm."
About this rocky start. On the first day of school, I slipped out of class, climbed to the attic, popped through the skylight, and crawled up on the roof for a good look around. At home, my climbing pursuits had been encouraged, as my father was a B-17 pilot. But in kindergarten, I was most surprised to learn this was not the case. As punishment for giving everyone a big scare, I was forced to sit for a week at the PINK table, where all bad boys were marooned. Yes, I learned my lesson, but perhaps just not the one intended. This was my first experience with cultural castration, in this case by gender color-shaming. In one fell swoop, all the girls in the class were insulted, too.
I feel connected with outsiders, people dismissed for their culture, the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, the cut of their clothes, their dreams. I even feel drawn to smokers now, exiled and marginalized, forced to do their dirty business in the rain. Once they were people. They were stylish people! Then they were people who smoked. Now, ominously, they are Smokers. Once we've given you a label–and yes, we're all guilty of this–we've got you.
My novel Museum of Human Beings was about Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, the expedition papoose of the Lewis & Clark Voyage of Discovery who we decided would remain a baby forever. On coins, in school, on paintings, in song. How easy. We didn't even use his name. We labeled him the Papoose, which is really what he was riding in.
We use labels to make sense of the Universe, but in doing so we create nonsense.
There is a growing awareness of the tension between self-definition (by sex, by attraction, by ethnicity, by race, by age) and cosmic definition. These handles become elusive under scrutiny. Gender is not in your genitals, and sexual orientation is not in your anatomical sex organs. Raffi gives up conventional manhood by going through the most obvious transformation for the promise of celebrity. The Boston Castrato illustrates how corrosive labels can be, and how castrating, in that they make a person feel powerless. There are so many other ways your power can be taken from you, some of our choosing, some by birth, and some by circumstance.
At a dinner party, a friend (who died last year of multiple sclerosis but always kept her own naughty sense of humor, even in paraplegia) rabbit punched me with, Must everything be a joke to you? in her usual Teutonic clip. I'm experimenti
Hunt them down!
Heedless, headstrong, and headlong love. Who knew it would doom her country, too? Intelligent, stylish Iordana wasn’t interested in communist strategies while she enjoyed spectacular privilege–unimaginable to the 20 million souls living under the iron fist of a dictatorship ruled by a murderous family she chose to marry into.
But as a member of the elite Nomenclatura during Romania's cool 1960s, she had to have her Valentin. Just as she rose in the Ceausescu clan over her parents’ objections, so she fell when the murderous dictator and his criminal partner were taken down.
“Death to the Dracu grandson” rang through the subways. An angry world chased her and her son in an effort to wipe the name Ceausescu off the face of the earth. They hunted her from Bucharest to Israel to Canada to closer than you think. She escaped to the other side of the world, only to find herself branded an illegal alien in a quiet suburb on the coast of Maine.
Where to go? Where to hide? How will he even register for school? A tiny town in America will have to do for now.
On The Boston Castrato, 2017
One of the inspirations for my writing The Boston Castrato is a recovered memory. Cleaning out my basement, I ran into a battered report card from the Ledgemere Country Day School in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. "After a very rocky start, Colin's behavior has improved and is now more in line with the norm."
About this rocky start. On the first day of school, I slipped out of class, climbed to the attic, popped through the skylight, and crawled up on the roof for a good look around. At home, my climbing pursuits had been encouraged, as my father was a B-17 pilot. But in kindergarten, I was most surprised to learn this was not the case. As punishment for giving everyone a big scare, I was forced to sit for a week at the PINK table, where all bad boys were marooned. Yes, I learned my lesson, but perhaps just not the one intended. This was my first experience with cultural castration, in this case by gender color-shaming. In one fell swoop, all the girls in the class were insulted, too.
I feel connected with outsiders, people dismissed for their culture, the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, the cut of their clothes, their dreams. I even feel drawn to smokers now, exiled and marginalized, forced to do their dirty business in the rain. Once they were people. They were stylish people! Then they were people who smoked. Now, ominously, they are Smokers. Once we've given you a label–and yes, we're all guilty of this–we've got you.
My novel Museum of Human Beings was about Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, the expedition papoose of the Lewis & Clark Voyage of Discovery who we decided would remain a baby forever. On coins, in school, on paintings, in song. How easy. We didn't even use his name. We labeled him the Papoose, which is really what he was riding in.
We use labels to make sense of the Universe, but in doing so we create nonsense.
There is a growing awareness of the tension between self-definition (by sex, by attraction, by ethnicity, by race, by age) and cosmic definition. These handles become elusive under scrutiny. Gender is not in your genitals, and sexual orientation is not in your anatomical sex organs. Raffi gives up conventional manhood by going through the most obvious transformation for the promise of celebrity. The Boston Castrato illustrates how corrosive labels can be, and how castrating, in that they make a person feel powerless. There are so many other ways your power can be taken from you, some of our choosing, some by birth, and some by circumstance.
At a dinner party, a friend (who died last year of multiple sclerosis but always kept her own naughty sense of humor, even in paraplegia) rabbit punched me with, Must everything be a joke to you? in her usual Teutonic clip. I'm experimenti
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 4, 2024
Imagine a novel that flies you into the heart of darkness, not through the jungles of Africa, but high above, in the open skies, where the line between hero and villain blurs. This isn't your typical tale of adventure; it's a deep dive into the psyche of Hunter, a character with a past so complex, it's like walking, or flying, through a labyrinth.
Hunter lives a life that's anything but ordinary. Picture a guy who's made a name for himself by uncovering truths people hide in the darkest corners of their closets. One day, he stumbles upon something—a mystery that ties back to his own murky past, involving none other than Charles Lindbergh, an icon wrapped in layers of intrigue and controversy. This discovery launches Hunter on a journey that's anything but straight and narrow.
Flying Dark thrusts you into a world where the stakes are sky-high. Hunter's quest for answers takes him across continents, from the vibrant streets of Paris to the historic heart of Berlin, and even through the genteel elegance of Geneva. Each destination is more than just a backdrop; it's a piece of the puzzle, a step closer to unraveling a mystery that's as personal as it is profound.
But Hunter's journey isn't just an external quest across the globe; it's an internal voyage into the depths of his own soul. Haunted by nightmares and chased by demons from his past, Hunter's fight isn't just against the mysteries he seeks to unravel; it's against the very essence of his being. The tension between who he was, who he is, and who he wants to be, propels the story forward, making every revelation, every moment of understanding, a hard-won victory.
The novel's heart beats with the theme of redemption. Through Hunter's eyes, we see a world where heroes and villains aren't defined by their actions but by their capacity for change, for growth. It's a narrative that challenges you to question the very nature of right and wrong, to look beyond the surface and see the shades of gray in between.
Flying Dark is a ride of emotions, a novel that mixes historical intrigue with drama, set against a backdrop of high-stakes adventure. It's a book for those who love their mysteries with a side of existential contemplation. Through Hunter's story, Colin W. Sargent offers a thrilling exploration of the human condition, inviting readers to ponder their own place in history and humanity.
Hunter lives a life that's anything but ordinary. Picture a guy who's made a name for himself by uncovering truths people hide in the darkest corners of their closets. One day, he stumbles upon something—a mystery that ties back to his own murky past, involving none other than Charles Lindbergh, an icon wrapped in layers of intrigue and controversy. This discovery launches Hunter on a journey that's anything but straight and narrow.
Flying Dark thrusts you into a world where the stakes are sky-high. Hunter's quest for answers takes him across continents, from the vibrant streets of Paris to the historic heart of Berlin, and even through the genteel elegance of Geneva. Each destination is more than just a backdrop; it's a piece of the puzzle, a step closer to unraveling a mystery that's as personal as it is profound.
But Hunter's journey isn't just an external quest across the globe; it's an internal voyage into the depths of his own soul. Haunted by nightmares and chased by demons from his past, Hunter's fight isn't just against the mysteries he seeks to unravel; it's against the very essence of his being. The tension between who he was, who he is, and who he wants to be, propels the story forward, making every revelation, every moment of understanding, a hard-won victory.
The novel's heart beats with the theme of redemption. Through Hunter's eyes, we see a world where heroes and villains aren't defined by their actions but by their capacity for change, for growth. It's a narrative that challenges you to question the very nature of right and wrong, to look beyond the surface and see the shades of gray in between.
Flying Dark is a ride of emotions, a novel that mixes historical intrigue with drama, set against a backdrop of high-stakes adventure. It's a book for those who love their mysteries with a side of existential contemplation. Through Hunter's story, Colin W. Sargent offers a thrilling exploration of the human condition, inviting readers to ponder their own place in history and humanity.
April 3, 2024
The cover immediately gripped me. Flying Dark is an immersive journey into the depths of historical intrigue and personal demons. Sargent presents us with Hunter, a complex protagonist whose life merges with the enigmatic and dark history of aviator Charles Lindbergh. The novel is a blend of horror, history, and mystery. A page-turner.
Hunter, a character with a shadowy past as a black ops military officer, finds himself in a chilling mystery following the discovery of his German teacher's corpse at his old reformatory grounds. This event leads him to an investigation, from Paris to London, and into Lindbergh's sinister legacy. I love the psychological horror elements that are present, including nightmares, hallucinations, and the presence of the stage prop "Old Sparky". And I love the fact that the flight motif is not just a backdrop but a metaphorical journey through Hunter's internal struggles.
HellBound Books Publishing has done an amazing job with Flying Dark, showcasing their excellence in delivering spine-chilling narratives. The editing is top-notch, ensuring that the suspense and horror elements are balanced with historical accuracy and rich character development.
Hunter, a character with a shadowy past as a black ops military officer, finds himself in a chilling mystery following the discovery of his German teacher's corpse at his old reformatory grounds. This event leads him to an investigation, from Paris to London, and into Lindbergh's sinister legacy. I love the psychological horror elements that are present, including nightmares, hallucinations, and the presence of the stage prop "Old Sparky". And I love the fact that the flight motif is not just a backdrop but a metaphorical journey through Hunter's internal struggles.
HellBound Books Publishing has done an amazing job with Flying Dark, showcasing their excellence in delivering spine-chilling narratives. The editing is top-notch, ensuring that the suspense and horror elements are balanced with historical accuracy and rich character development.
April 5, 2024
Wow, 'Flying Dark' really took me by surprise! It’s like stepping into a time machine, with all these cool old planes and daring pilots. Colin W. Sargent has a way of telling a story that makes you feel like you're right there with the characters, up in the sky, feeling the adrenaline. It's not just a book about planes; it’s about people chasing what they believe in, making tough choices, and sometimes crashing (literally and figuratively). Definitely a fun read if you're looking for something that keeps you hooked without needing to be a history buff.
April 5, 2024
In "Flying Dark," readers find themselves whisked away on an exhilarating adventure through the early days of aviation, guided by the deft hand of Colin W. Sargent. His storytelling is vibrant, filled with moments of tension, triumph, and heartache that remind us why we look to the skies and dream. Sargent masterfully blends historical facts with the emotional journeys of his characters, making the past feel immediate and alive. This book is a testament to the spirit of exploration and innovation, a beacon for dreamers and history enthusiasts alike.
April 12, 2024
In "Flying Dark" by Colin W. Sargent, readers are thrust into the turbulent world of Hunter, an ex-military aviator who uncovers disturbing truths while grappling with his own murky past. As someone who adores both dogs and books, I found Hunter's loyalty in the face of adversity reminiscent of a steadfast canine companion. The background includes cities like Paris and Berlin, with Hunter's internal battles mirroring the external chaos. I liked the complex characters and the dark, atmospheric settings.
April 5, 2024
The discovery of his German teacher's body at his former reformatory school propels him into a labyrinth of intrigue, where distinguishing friend from foe becomes increasingly challenging. The storyline is full of skillfull interplay as Hunter struggles with his identity, his unorthodox methods stemming from his military background, and his confrontations with the darkness within and around him. Excellent work of fiction.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews