Desperate for cash, addicted to prescription drugs, and mourning his failed marriage, ex-cop Joe Crow takes a security job that could cost him his life in this hilariously thrilling mystery by Pete Hautman.

A depressed ex-cop with a dead-end job, a faltering marriage, a rotten stomach, and an increasingly expensive drug habit, Joe Crow is just looking for a drink and poker game on the night he steps into Birdy’s. Instead, he comes face to face with the man who might either save his life or absolutely destroy it.

Crow first notices Dr. Nelson Bellwether when a chair is smashed over his head. A surgeon with a big mouth, a gambler’s personality, and some serious debt to the IRS, Bellwether is on his way to deep trouble.

Bringing him along for the ride when he hires him as a body guard, Crow finds himself in the midst of trophy elk’s murder, a dual kidnapping, and a six-hundred-pound tiger, making the small town cop wish he had a bodyguard of his own.

Pete Hautman is the author of National Book Award–winning novel Godless, Sweetblood, Hole in the Sky, Stone Cold, The Flinkwater Factor, The Forgetting Machine, and Mr. Was, which was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America, as well as several adult novels. He lives in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Visit him at PeteHautman.com.