The pigeon

In this violence-packed fifth Joe the Bouncer outing (after 2022's The Wild Life), Gordon delivers a too-busy, if appealingly left-field, crime caper. Joe, who grew up in "a clan of thieves and grifters" and passed through Harvard and the Special Forces, works as a bouncer at a Queens strip club, reading classic literature in his spare time. He's become a valued resource for New York City's Mafia families, and one day Gio, a Mafia boss, taps Joe for a job that at first seems easy: Brooklyn gangster Alonzo is distraught over the theft of his champion racing pigeon, Ramses, valued at over $1 million, and he believes that Wing Chow, a rich pigeon collector, is responsible. But when Joe's burglary of Chow's Upper West Side apartment goes south, he finds himself in the crosshairs of a league of assassins he must fight off--in, of course, hyperviolent fashion--if he wants to survive. Joe is a memorable creation, but Gordon overloads the plot with convoluted character motivations that detract from his gleefully gruesome set pieces. Admirers of humor-leavened antihero capers may enjoy themselves, but this isn't a shining example of the genre. Agent: Douglas Stewart, Sterling Lord Literistic. (June)

The theft of a caged bird may seem like no big deal, but in author Gordon's hands the recovery mission assumes epic proportions. Call Ramses II the Maltese Pigeon. He's worth $1 million, and his owner, Alonzo the breeder, convinced that he's been stolen by billionaire Wing Chow, offers Joe Brody, the bouncer at their mutual friend Giovanni Caprisi's Club Rendezvous in Queens, 5% of that sum to retrieve him. The job seems insultingly straightforward--sneak into the thief's place in luxurious Manhattan co-op the Eleonora, open the cage, grab the pigeon, and leave--but Joe's completed only the first of those steps when he's detected on the premises and escapes only by the skin of his teeth. Curious about why the Eleonora is so well fortified, he asks Juno, his underage neighborhood hacker, to find out more, and it turns out there are excellent reasons that lead to a further pursuit of the would-be pigeon rescuer: four separate attempts on his life and a listing as a target on the online International Bounty Exchange. As Joe dodges the freelance assassins jockeying to claim their reward and the NYPD chases after the Parking Avenger, a wish-fulfilling vigilante who defaces illegally parked cars, Joe's secret lover, FBI agent Donna Zamora, is given the equally trivial-sounding job of serving as guide and bodyguard to newly arrived refugee Col. Evon Kozco, who swiftly turns into an ardent pursuer of both her and a plush apartment in the Eleonora. Donna's too jaundiced to rejoice in a swain more socially acceptable than the unofficial sheriff of New York's mob scene, and her reservations are abundantly justified. Trust Gordon to whip a bunch of nothing into something breathtakingly over-the-top. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.