A special forces agent-turned-strip club bouncer with a side hustle as a hitman for the New York mob seeks out a deadly drug lord in the poppy fields of Afghanistan.

Joe Brody is just your average ex-Special Ops, Dostoevsky-reading, PTSD-suffering strip club bouncer living with his grandma in Queens. It would be a simple life, but for his childhood friend the Mafia boss, his other job as fixer for the most powerful crime families in town, and his cloying drug habit.

Joe is sent to take out a shadowy figure named Zahir, who has been hijacking heroin bound for U.S. dealers and funneling the money to terror cells. So Joe finds himself back in the one place in the world he doesn't want to revisit: the poppy fields of Afghanistan, a country that left permanent scars on his body as well as his psyche. If he were alone, his past demons might be too much to bear – but luckily his occasional partner Yelena, a master thief wanted from Brighton Beach to Moscow, is by his side.

Soon the Five Boroughs are on the verge of an all-out drug war. Joe's only chance to calm the violence is to intercept the newest shipment of Zahir's product – if his skills prove up to the task.

Reviews for David Gordon:

'Gordon brings an outstanding new voice to the contemporary crime novel' Robert Crais

'Gordon knows how to write a potboiler' LA Times