Caught Stealing

Book excerpt: A retired baseball player finds himself fighting for his life in this “fantastically hopped-up thriller [with] a wrong-man plot worthy of Hitchcock” (Entertainment Weekly, Editor’s Choice). “Wow! Brutal, visceral, violent, edgy, and brilliant.”—Harlan Coben In development as a major motion picture starring Austin Butler and directed by Darren Aronofsky Henry “call me Hank” Thompson used to play California baseball. Now he tends to a bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. When two Russians in tracksuits beat Hank to a pulp, he gets the clue: someone wants something from him. He just doesn’t know what it is, where it is, or how to make them understand he doesn’t have it. Within twenty-for hours, Hank is running over rooftops, playing hide-and-seek with the NYPD, riding the subway with a dead man at his side, and counting a whole lot of cash on a concrete floor. All because of some Russian hoods and a flat-out freakshow of goons. All because once, in another life, the only thing Hank wanted to steal was third base—without getting caught.