Unpleasant, violent men leading unpleasant, violent lives are the essence of this tale, set in Nevada. HOOK AND SHOOT details the life of a cage fighter, Woodshed Wallace, in the second of this series.

Wallace has had some fraught episodes in Brazil and is recovering from a mass of injuries including severe eyebrow scarring. He's hoping for some down time but a friend, Eddie, asks him to run security for him and warns that there are business deals going on with his 'entertainment' company, Warrior, and the Yakuza, the Japanese organized crime gang. A wiser man would have backed off at once but nobody would call Wallace very wise. Before long he is helping to murder a ninja assassin in the back of a stretch limo and to hide the body in a freezer in a storage facility. Nobody mentions calling the police. Their troubles, and the body count, have just begun.

Jeremy Brown gives us a world of casinos, marble stairs, conference tables, gyms, statuary and tiled pools; a world of hard, of pain, of machismo. He assures us that 'mixed martial arts cage fighting' is licensed in Nevada; think Mad Max rather than a dojo. If you like Harlan Coben's books about Myron Bolitar but find them too friendly, witty and intellectual for your taste, you will probably get on well with Woodshed Wallace.