Once a Crooked Man

Book excerpt: A struggling actor gets caught up in a mob family’s last hit in this comic crime thriller by the beloved actor from TV’s NCIS. Crime pays. And pays well. Sal, Max, and Enzo Bruschetti have proved this over a lifetime of nefarious activity that they have kept hidden from law enforcement. Now, however, Max has a problem. His doctor has told him to take it easy, and so Max has decided that the time has come for the family to retire. But when young actor Harry Murphy overhears the Bruschetti brothers planning changes to their organization, including the murder of a man in London who knows too much, he makes the well-intentioned if egregious mistake of trying to warn the Brushettis’ intended victim, and the brothers’ plans begin to unravel . . . At turns tense and funny, Once a Crooked Man is infused with the infectious charm that made David McCallum one of television’s longest running, most-beloved stars. Praise for Once a Crooked Man “Crackling, darkly comic.” —Parade “Pretty danged good.” —The Washington Post “Highly entertaining . . . McCallum respects the genre’s tenets, supplying the right amount of intrigue, violence, and sex for a well-plotted, action-packed tale.” —Associated Press