Among Thieves

Olivia Sanchez—smart, driven, and beautiful—started at the bottom and worked her way up the ranks of a brokerage firm only to be unjustly, brutally fired, then blackballed.

With no place else to go, she turns to her cousin, Manny Guzman, ex-con and ex-gang leader, for help. Manny’s first instinct is to hit back. Hard. But his partner, James Beck knows that out in the real world, things aren’t done that way. Beck, with a tight group of three other ex-cons, works out of a discreet base of operations in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook. To help Manny, he and his partners, along with a network of close "associates," offer to look into what happened to Olivia, and fix it.

But nothing is as simple as it first appears, and Beck and his men end up going to war against a formidable list of enemies: the politically connected CEO of a Manhattan brokerage firm; a Russian arms dealer; a small army of Bosnian war criminals; a ruthless gang of Russian mobsters; and, last but not least, the NYPD.

With too many foes coming at them from too many angles, Beck and his men are going to have to survive against impossible odds, avoid being sent back to prison, and in the process, steal $116 million dollars.

JOHN CLARKSON is the author of five previous thrillers and crime novels published in the late 90’s, and the early 00's. During the day ran a boutique advertising firm, then a private marketing and advertising consulting firm. He has worked directly with corporate clients such as NewPower, Chase Manhattan and E*Trade Financial where he helped create the notorious E*Trade Baby. Like James Beck, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.