Smoker

Greg Rucka has won national acclaim for his two gripping thrillers, Finder and Keeper, which have been hailed as "impressive" (People), "remarkable" (The Orlando Sentinel), and "full of surprises" (The Houston Chronicle).  Now, in Rucka's most explosive novel to date, professional bodyguard Atticus Kodiak returns to confront an enemy without conscience or mercy--a master of manipulation, a pure connoisseur of killing.

For a professional bodyguard, there's nothing worse than being tagged as a man who attracts danger.  But after his last job, that's just what they're saying about Atticus Kodiak.  In fact, there's only one person in the business willing to touch him with a ten-foot pole.  

An easy job, according to Elliot Trent, head of New York's biggest security firm: baby-sit a pampered playboy hiding from the angry brothers of an ex-playmate.  It's a job Kodiak finds himself forced to accept, a decision that draws him into a multimillion-dollar game of cat and mouse.

The mouse: Jeremiah Pugh, a material witness whose testimony can knock the legs out from beneath America's mighty tobacco industry.  Racked with guilt, Pugh may be his own worst enemy.

The cat: known only as John Doe, one of the Ten, designated by international law enforcement as one of the ten most dangerous contract killers in the world.  A ghost, unknown and unidentified, who changes with the wind and adapts to any situation.

Drawn into the field of fire by Elliot Trent, Atticus finds himself exactly where he doesn't want to be--between the killer and the target.  For Atticus and the assassin are bound by a common thread: their obsession to get the job done.

It's an obsession that will connect the assassin and the protector in the most intimate of relationships, anticipating each other's moves, exploiting each other's weaknesses, baring each other's secrets, and raising the stakes in a game where the first player to flinch...dies.

In Smoker, Atticus Kodiak meets his match in a thriller of unrelenting suspense guaranteed to suck you in, blow you away, and leave you breathless--a novel that confirms Greg Rucka's place among today's top suspense writers.

Born in San Francisco, Greg Rucka was raised on the Monterey Peninsula.  He has worked at a variety of jobs, from theatrical fight choreographer to emergency medical technician.  He and his wife, Jennifer, reside in Eugene, Oregon, where he is at work on his next novel, Chasing the Dragon.