The Bouncer

Book excerpt: Introducing Joe the Bouncer in “a tour-de-force, ranging from underworld crime to a unique caper and a terrorist plot . . . an outstanding new voice” (Robert Crais, #1 New York Times bestselling author). In David Gordon’s diabolically imaginative 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. “A brilliantly goofy caper novel in the grand tradition of Donald E. Westlake.”—The New York Times Book Review “[An] impressive crime novel . . . Gordon’s sharply drawn supporting cast adds a nice balance to all the action.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)