The Bouncer - Hardcover

Gordon, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802128009 ISBN 13: 9780802128003

Publisher: Mysterious Press, 2018

Synopsis

In David Gordon’s diabolically imaginative new thriller, The Bouncer, nothing and no one is as expected―from a vial of yellow fragrance to a gangster who moonlights in women’s clothes.

Joe Brody is just your average Dostoevsky-reading, Harvard-expelled strip club bouncer who has a highly classified military history and whose best friend from Catholic school happens to be head mafioso Gio Caprisi. FBI agent Donna Zamora, the best shot in her class at Quantico, is a single mother stuck at a desk manning the hotline. Their storylines intersect over a tip from a cokehead that leads to a crackdown on Gio’s strip joint in Queens and Joe’s arrest―just one piece of a city-wide sweep aimed at flushing out anyone who might have a lead on the various terrorists whose photos are hanging on the wall under Most Wanted. Outside the jailhouse, the Fed and the bouncer lock eyes, as Gordon launches them both headlong into a nonstop plot that goes from back-road gun show intervention to high-stakes perfume heist and manages to touch everyone from the CIA to the Flushing Triads. Beneath it all lurks a sinister criminal mastermind whose manipulations could cause chaos on a massively violent scale.

For readers who like a heavy dose of fun with their murder, this is crime fiction at its freshest, from a virtuoso of the “darkly comic, stylish literary thriller” (Associated Press).

About this title

About the Author

David Gordon holds an MA in English and Comparative Literature and an MFA in Writing, both from Columbia University, and has worked in film, fashion, publishing and pornography. He is the author of The Serialist, which won the VCU/Cabell First Novel Award and was a finalist for an Edgar Award, and Mystery Girl, as well as a short story collection, White Tiger on Snow Mountain. His work has appeared in the Paris Review, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. He was born and lives in New York City.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Joe looked up, sort of smiling mildly, and folded the page of his book. Then he saw where Crystal was pointing. The giant was wading through the crowd, apparently hauling Kim off to his lair to eat later. Moving easy, Joe stepped right into his path.

“Hey! You! Meat!” he yelled. “Over here.”

The giant made a frowny face, focusing on Joe like a bull seeing a red flag. “Don’t call me that.”

Joe grinned. “How about I give you a lap dance?”

Grumbling, the giant tossed Kim to the side, and she crashed onto a table of Asian tourists. Then he made for Joe. Crystal felt a little bad and braced herself to see that pretty face get ugly. The giant hauled off and threw a punch, his fist coming down like a sledgehammer. But Joe dipped gracefully and, riding on the balls of his feet, stepped safely inside his swing. He kicked out, knocking the giant’s shin from under him. As he stumbled, Joe reached in to grab a point on his thick neck.

“Ow!” Like a wounded monster, the giant howled in pain and tried to shake loose, but Joe just pinched harder.

“Easy, easy, let’s walk,” he said, leading the bent giant along, groaning and moaning. The crowd parted and they went right out the door.

Kimberly got up, slowly, with the help of the tourists.

“Wow,” she said to Crystal. “Now that’s a good bouncer.”

Edition details

• Publisher: Mysterious Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0802128009
• ISBN 13: 9780802128003
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224