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 ¿ a