The Haul

Professional thief Stacks O'Conner has the chance of a lifetime-his biggest score yet, in the heart of Los Angeles-in this fast-paced contemporary novel about a morally gray character at a crossroads, from crime legend Gary Phillips.

A professional thief takes the chance of a lifetime-his biggest score yet-in this tense heist novel set in the heart of contemporary Los Angeles.

After years of close calls, O'Conner-the former "Warlord of Willow Ridge"-spends most of his time in semi-retirement, running his legitimate businesses and playing pickleball. Except for his longtime girlfriend, no one in his middle-class subdivision is the wiser to his double-life.

But O'Conner's past refuses to stay dead, and when he's approached with a job he can't resist, he agrees to mastermind his biggest score yet- a multi-million-dollar raid of a tech billionaire's secret bunker, which is hidden beneath his newly constructed basketball arena. As the job goes down, testing O'Conner's mettle with unexpected challenges, the promise of the score attracts ghosts from his past that he thought were long buried.

Interwoven with flashbacks to O'Conner's coming-of-age in Los Angeles, this pulse-pounding thriller is both an homage to Donald Westlake's Parker series and a rich portrait of a morally gray thief at a crossroads.