Against the Law by David Gordon

Published by Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press on May 25, 2021

The third book in the Joe the Bouncer series returns Joe Brody to the fight against terrorism. Joe is a former Special Forces guy who has conquered addictions and other demons. Now he works as a strip club bouncer who does freelance work for Gio, the Mafia boss who owns the club. His freelance work so far has advanced the New York underworld’s war on terror, a war it fights because terrorism is bad for business. And because doing occasional favors for the FBI and CIA has its perks.

Much of Against the Law will be familiar to series readers. Joe the criminal continues his flirtation with Donna the FBI agent, who continues her distrust of the CIA agent to whom she was once married. Joe continues something more than a flirtation with Yelena the Russian criminal. Donna’s mother continues her friendship with Joe’s grandmother. All of those characters play important roles in the novel.  As one might hope and expect in a series, a couple of these relationships change by the time the novel ends. Even a subplot involving Gio’s marital problems, exacerbated by proclivities that he tried to hide from his wife, appears to be resolved.

The story begins in Afghanistan, where Joe has traveled to kill Zahir, a nemesis he has seen before. Zahir has been smuggling high quality heroin into New York by unknown means. Zahir seems to be trying to corner the New York drug market with better heroin than the locals are supplying. Zahir then funnels the profits to terrorist cells. New York’s criminal organizations don’t appreciate foreign competition. Gio and the other crime czars are paying Joe a half million dollars to take out Zahir.

When Joe’s mission doesn’t go as planned, the plot detours to a corporation called Wildwater (think Halliburton combined with the company formerly known as Blackwater). The CIA is in bed with Wildwater, which is in bed with Zahir and with a psychopathic military contractor named Toomey. Toomey’s take on the war against terror is to inflict some terror of his own, bringing about the clash of civilizations for which people on the far right long, provided they are not personally inconvenienced by the clash. All of those entities in the same bed makes a predictable mess. It falls to Joe and his underworld buddies, with an assist from Donna, to clean up the mess and once again save New York from imminent disaster.

This book seems to bring to an end to a three-book arc, while leaving room to move forward with the development of certain characters and their relationships. While the familiar characters are likeable, the familiar plot — Joe takes on terrorists, fights and kills and survives — has become a bit predictable. I have enjoyed all the Joe the Bouncer novels, but I enjoyed this one less because it seemed like a book I had read twice before. I hope David Gordon moves Joe away from terrorism plots and toward something fresh and original in the next novel. Still, I look forward to reading the next one because Joe the Bouncer remains a unique and engaging criminal protagonist.

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