Hard Stop

After two recently laid-off suburban dads decide to steal a vanload of counterfeit Viagra from a mob-connected businessman, their easy-money plan gets a whole lot harder.
Hard Stop is a comic crime novel set amid a soft housing market and a flaccid economy, where desperate times lead to bad behavior — and the stiffest of penalties.

Jim Metz was pharmaceutical salesman of the year, but now he’s partnered with his shady neighbor Dave Malley in a desperate bid to come up with some fast cash, aided by the pony-tailed, double-crossing ex-con Chimp Wiggins.

Chimp’s boss Jerzy “Shore” Shalinski brings in ex-cop-turned-PI Knocker Morris — a guy who makes his living somewhere between “legal” and “not so much” — to find out who grabbed his product. Enter an ambitious wannabe-Attorney General named William Blankley and his state-cop partner Nora Raines, who offer Morris a powerful incentive to help take down Shore with a made-for-TV police raid that will move the two of them up the political food chain — but leave Knocker stuck between a rock and a very hard place.