The Pigeon: A Joe the Bouncer Novel

by David Gordon

Overview

A BookPage best mystery of the month.

A New York mob fixer’s search for a stolen racing pigeon sends him into a warren of assassins.

Harvard dropout and ex-Special Forces operative Joe Brody is climbing the ranks in the criminal underworld. After successfully executing multiple missions for the various crime syndicates that run New York City, he has come to earn the trust and respect of the city’s most dangerous denizens. Which is why his newest task — retrieving a pet pigeon snatched from a rooftop coop in Brooklyn — has Joe puzzled … until he learns that the bird is valued at close to a million dollars.

Joe hatches a plan to sneak into the luxury park-side apartment building where the pigeon is held captive. But that simple plan takes a deadly turn when he stumbles upon a nest of international war criminals and a ruthless building manager overseeing the nefarious operation. Fearing that Joe's entry into the building has somehow compromised the scheme, they put a bounty on his head. In New York, Joe is untouchable, but his new foes come from outside the flock, and he’ll need a wing and a prayer to elude their assassins.

With high-stakes action sequences punctuated by laugh out loud humor, The Pigeon is an entertaining caper with nods to vintage crime fiction by masters like Elmore Leonard and Richard Stark. It’s a perfect entry point into David Gordon’s enjoyable Joe the Bouncer series, and a great continuation for returning fans.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613164051
Publisher:	Penzler Publishers
Publication date:	06/13/2023
Series:	Joe The Bouncer
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

David Gordon was born in New York City. His first novel, "The Serialist," won the VCU/Cabell First Novel Award and was a finalist for an Edgar Award. It was also made into a major motion picture in Japan. His work has also appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times, Purple, and Fence, among other publications.

Editorial Reviews

04/24/2023

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)

Publishers Weekly

"A self-referential love letter to noir … It’s a fun ride."

Reviewing the Evidence

"There is plenty of humor in the mix, as in an Ed McBain or Elmore Leonard novel, and plenty of action, too, realistically delivered without being egregiously graphic."

BookPage

"The series has an alternate world appeal not unlike John Wick, but run through with a deep appreciation for classic literature—and classic crime fiction in the Donald Westlake and Lawrence Block mold. It’s not to be missed."

CrimeReads

2023-03-11
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.

Kirkus Reviews

An outstanding new voice.”

Robert Crais