Marked Man

It must have been a hell of a night. One of those long, dangerous nights where the world shifts and doors open. A night of bad judgment and wrong turns, of weariness and hilarity and a hard sexual charge that both frightens and compels. A night where your life changes irrevocably, for better or for worse, but who the hell cares, so long as it changes.

It must have been a night just like that, yeah, if only I could remember it.

All Victor Carl knows is that he’s just woken up with his suit in tatters, his socks missing, and a stinging pain in his chest thanks to a new tattoo he doesn’t remember getting: a heart inscribed with the name Chantal Adair.

My apartment is trashed, my partnership is cracking up, I’m drinking too much, flirting with reporters, sleeping with Realtors. Frankly, I’m in desperate need of something hard and clean in my life, and finding Chantal is all I have.

Is Chantal Adair the love of Victor’s life or a terrible drunken mistake? Victor intends to find out, but right now he’s got bigger concerns. His client, a wanted man, needs to come in out of the cold, and he’s got a stolen painting for Victor to use as leverage.

But someone is not happy that the painting has surfaced. Or that the client is threatening to tell all. Or that Victor is sniffing around for information about Chantal Adair. The closer Victor comes to figuring it all out, the deeper into danger he falls, as the ghosts of the past return to claim what’s theirs.

It must have been a hell of a night. One of those long, dangerous nights where the world shifts and doors open. A night of bad judgment and wrong turns, of weariness and hilarity and a hard sexual charge that both frightens and compels. A night where your life changes irrevocably, for better or for worse, but who the hell cares, so long as it changes.

It must have been a night just like that, yeah, if only I could remember it.

All Victor Carl knows is that he’s just woken up with his suit in tatters, his socks missing, and a stinging pain in his chest thanks to a new tattoo he doesn’t remember getting: a heart inscribed with the name Chantal Adair.

My apartment is trashed, my partnership is cracking up, I’m drinking too much, flirting with reporters, sleeping with Realtors. Frankly, I’m in desperate need of something hard and clean in my life, and finding Chantal is all I have.

Is Chantal Adair the love of Victor’s life or a terrible drunken mistake? Victor intends to find out, but right now he’s got bigger concerns. His client, a wanted man, needs to come in out of the cold, and he’s got a stolen painting for Victor to use as leverage.

But someone is not happy that the painting has surfaced. Or that the client is threatening to tell all. Or that Victor is sniffing around for information about Chantal Adair. The closer Victor comes to figuring it all out, the deeper into danger he falls, as the ghosts of the past return to claim what’s theirs.

Publishers Weekly

A sense of humor is seldom found in today's top thrillers, but bestseller Lashner possesses one in spades and reader Rohan gets the joke. The author's boozing, lecherous, rule-bending Philadelphia lawyer, Victor Carl-the kind of guy who, in his sixth outing, wakes up with a colossal hangover and an unfamiliar woman's name tattooed on his chest-would seem a throwback to the fondly recalled, politically incorrect screwball sleuths of the '30s and '40s. But Carl has more dimension than his pulp ancestors, and Rohan plays the attorney as both intelligent and lighthearted as he simultaneously searches for the mystery woman whose name, Chantal Adair, he now wears, while brokering a deal that will bring an old gangster in from the cold. Rohan is equally resourceful in delivering a well-timed punch line: when the lawyer asks a young woman at a bar to sample his drink, she does and replies, "Tastes like hummingbird vomit." Rohan's easygoing narration takes advantage of every charming and glib aspect of Carl, to whom women react, in his own words, "with an appealing lack of respect." Simultaneous release with the Morrow hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 20). (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

New York Times bestselling author William Lashner is the author of seven suspense novels that have been published in more than a dozen languages throughout the world. A graduate of the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, he lives with his family outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.