(Formerly titled YEAR OF THE ROOSTER)

A spellbinding standalone thriller by an award-winning author.

Kali. Arnie Blackwell had seen this weapon made of bamboo once before—and he knows what it can do when in the right hands. The musclebound man facing him would certainly know how to handle the weapon. Fenn, the Filipino enforcer, and his boss, Smoke, appear at Arnie’s hotel room door determined to do two things: to recover the millions Arnie won from them in “The Slasher,” an epic cockfighting event, and to find out how Arnie was able to beat the system and take home the big purse.

Arnie’s secret, a secret he tries in vain to protect, is his ten-year-old autistic brother, William. Now the hunt is on for the boy, who has disappeared. Fenn the assassin, a cold-blooded monster of a man who kills everyone in his way and a league of FBI agents are all chasing William to use him or to protect the child according to their own agendas.

In the vein of his award-winning BULL MOUNTAIN and its sequel, LIKE LIONS, this standalone novel offers a window into the world of back country Georgia—where crime pays, but death is often in its wake.