The Bouncer

Starred review from June 4, 2018
One night at Club Rendezvous (“Queens’ finest gentleman’s club, conveniently close to the airport”), the NYPD, a SWAT team, and the Feds roll in as part of a coordinated citywide sweep for anyone with even remote terror connections and arrest several people, including bouncer Joe Brody, the hero of this impressive crime novel from Edgar-finalist Gordon (Mystery Girl). During his temporary detainment in a crowded holding cell, Joe runs across an acquaintance who persuades him to take part in a weapons heist. The job goes wrong, but Joe survives and ends up in a much more complicated situation. Meanwhile, frustrated FBI agent Donna Zamora keeps running across Joe as she tries to move from receiving tips to actual field work. Joe, “a hard-luck kid from Queens whose file read like a roller coaster of comebacks and blown chances,” proves his mettle in the quest to bring down the terrorists. Gordon’s sharply drawn supporting cast adds a nice balance to all the action. Cinematic writing makes this an obvious candidate for graphic novel or film adaptation. Agent: Douglas Stewart, Sterling Lord Literistic.

Starred review from May 1, 2018
A too-little-known writer who, for the last several years, has been turning out delightfully offbeat tales of fringe crooks with plenty of pizzazz (The Serialist, 2010; Mystery Girl, 2013) now stakes his claim as a major player in the comic-thriller world. Joe Brody is a Dostoevsky-reading bouncer at a strip club in Queens run by his high-school pal and now Mob higher-up Gio Caprisi. When the FBI closes down the strip club in a search for terrorists, Joe is at loose ends and reluctantly agrees to participate in a holdup designed to relieve some redneck gun enthusiasts of a shipment of their wares. This piece-of-cake job naturally turns out to be anything but, and soon Joe is dodging the feds (including agent Donna Zamora, with whom he shares a mutual attraction), sundry mobsters, and a pair of rich-kid terrorists who have set their sights on a vial of perfume with some deadly characteristics. The supporting players, from the cross-dressing Mob don to agent Zamora to the other members of Joe's ill-fated gang that couldn't shoot straight, are almost as endearing as Joe himself. Thomas Perry fans should catch up on Gordon's oeuvre as quickly as possible. This jewel of a book is as close as a devotee of comic caper novels can come to the sublime quirkiness of Perry's classic Metzger's Dog (1983).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)