The Wake-Up - Tapa dura

Frank Thorpe is set to board a plane at LAX for a much-needed vacation when he sees an obviously poor young boy knocked out of the way and senseless by an arrogant businessman rushing to a waiting Porsche.
Frank really needs some R&R. He's just been fired - over a fatal screw up - from the covert operations "shop" he's worked at for years. But Douglas Meachum - a hard-charging art dealer - needs to be made to feel something more than entitlement: nothing extreme, just a little wake-up call.
Given Frank's background and his expertise in good guy/bad guy tactics, it's easy for him to set up a scam involving some embarrassing revelations about a faked Mayan sculpture that Meachum sells to one of his clients. But the client isn't someone who takes kindly to mistakes. She's a ruthless social-climbing psychopath who, with her surfer dude husband (the Thomas Alva Edison of designer pharmaceuticals), runs a huge drug operation. And she's got an invincible thug duo - Vlad and Arturo - to carry out her notions of payback, which make Frank's wake-up scheme seem positively genteel. What started out as a good (if slightly underhanded) deed quickly veers out of control.

Robert Ferrigno is the author of seven previous novels, including Scavenger Hunt, Flinch, and the best-selling The Horse Latitudes. He lives with his family in the Pacific Northwest.