Review by Booklist Review
Charismatic crook Joe Brody, strip-club bouncer and Mob fixer, is the go-to guy when New York capo Gio Caprisi needs help with something outside the wheelhouse of your garden-variety thug. This time Gio sends Joe to Afghanistan, where his stint as a Special Forces operative in the employ of an off-the-books government agency left him with a world-class case of PTSD. His target is a terrorist known as Zahir, who's been stealing the Mob's heroin. Teamed again with the mercurial Yelena Noylaskya, Joe nabs some purloined heroin, but Zahir, the Scarlet Pimpernel of terrorists, slips through his grasp. Back in New York, the trail leads to a group of profit-hungry mercenaries--"greedy pigs," says Yelena, "who don't have the courage to be real outlaws." Maybe, but one of their soldiers has gone rogue from his plenty-rogue bosses and is wandering Manhattan with a nuclear device in hand. Enter FBI agent Donna Zamora, Joe's nemesis/crush, for another round of flirting and bad-guy snaring. This one has everything, from a car chase that makes what Steve McQueen does with that Mustang in Bullitt seem like a Sunday drive, to a showdown in a Russian bathhouse that is part Marx Brothers and part Kill Bill. For anyone with a taste for blood-spattered comic capers featuring characters who vault off the page, Against the Law is an exquisite fever dream in Technicolor.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Edgar finalist Gordon's audacious third novel featuring strip club bouncer Joe Brody (after 2019's The Hard Stuff) takes Brody to Afghanistan, where he once suffered mental and physical trauma while serving as a U.S. Special Forces operative. In Helmand Province, Brody awaits a heroin deal to be completed so that he can gun down the person he expects will steal the drugs, Zahir the Shadow, who has been hijacking narcotics and using them to fund terror attacks. Zahir's identity proves a surprise, but that reveal is merely the prologue to a race to avert a mass casualty event in Manhattan, which again partners Brody with attractive FBI agent Donna Zamora, who's emotionally entangled with him. Some readers may not care for Brody's insouciant attitude. "Now assassinating drug lords with terrorist ties was more like a hobby, something he did part-time when he wasn't busy with his regular gig, as a bouncer at a strip club in Queens." This one's for those who don't require realism in their thrillers. (May)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
His latest mission takes Joe the Bouncer back to the last place in the world he wants to visit. But he won't roost there, or anywhere else, for very long at all. Before he was anointed sheriff of New York's crime families, "911 for people who don't call the cops," strip-club bouncer Joe Brody put in his time with special forces in Afghanistan, where he left a good bit of his physical and mental well-being behind. So he's not eager to pursue the Helmand bandit king Zahir al Zilli, aka Zahir the Shadow, who's been hijacking heroin shipments those New York families have every right to. But money talks, and half a million dollars demands that attention must be paid, especially when it's bumped up to $2 million. So Joe heads off to Afghanistan, where he's happy to find his thieving friend Yelena Noylaskya, who's been missing since his last adventure in The Hard Stuff (2019). The reunited pair soon discover that Zahir's only a front for a far more powerful enemy: the Wildwater Corporation, whose founding CEO, Bob Richards, has dreams of world domination that only begin with intercepted shipments of White Angel. Cobbling together a motley crew that draws from the ranks of the FBI and the New York families, Joe and Yelena return home to challenge a cadre of villains that include rogue military contractor Rick Toomey, sociopathic assassin Victoria St. Smythe, and of course the Wildwater staff. Everyone involved is heavily armed, ruthless, and possessed of an irresistibly off-kilter sense of humor. Fans will know not to get too attached to supporting characters with half-lives shorter than that of fissionable uranium, which ends up making an appearance as well. Supercharged intrigue for readers who'd rather get swept off their feet than think too hard about what's going on. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
