The Hard Stuff

The hotly anticipated sequel to David Gordon's The Bouncer. For readers who like high-calibre humour mixed with their hard crime, here's a brilliant, pyrotechnic thriller from a fresh virtuoso of the crime caper genre.Ex-black-ops-specialist-turned-strip-club-bouncer Joe Brody has a new qualification to add to his resume: he's the 'sheriff' for an alliance of New York City's mob bosses.In the straight world, you call the cops - in the underworld, you call Joe. He's detoxing - too much of the hard stuff - at the clinic of a Chinese herbalist when the call comes in: the bosses need Joe to help them with - ironically - a high-end heroin problem. A new drug dealer is in town and the bosses think they might be an Al Quaeda splinter group, trading dope for diamonds to fund a major-league terrorist atrocity. And that would just be bad for business. Joe has a plan. He's a man who knows how to take down a terrorist cell.But first he needs a hit of the hard stuff - diamonds, this time - and lots