The Bouncer

David Gordon’s first novel, The Serialist , won the VCU/Cabell First Novel Award and was a finalist for an Edgar Award. The Bouncer is his first novel with The Mysterious Press and Gordon is one of the few new writers Otto (who calls The Bouncer “one of the best capers ever”) has decided to take on. For fans of Elmore Leonard, Richard Stark, and Chester Himes— The Bouncer combines dark, wry comedy with nonstop action. Gordon’s specialty is snappy dialogue coupled with a plot where multiple characters bounce off each other like billiard balls. Though the plotting is lightning-paced and the violence high-stakes, Gordon also slyly subverts many expectations of the genre—for example, the main mafia character, Gio Caprisi, lives peacefully on Long Island with his child psychologist wife but also has a secret life as a cross-dressing sadomasochist who enacts his fantasies in hotel rooms with his blonde male accountant. Gordon has real literary chops and his work also appeals to readers who normally aren’t drawn to the mystery genre. He has previously received blurbs from David Ebershoff ( The Danish Girl ), Rivka Galchen ( Atmospheric Disturbances ), Karen Russell ( Swamplandia! ), Karen Thompson Walker ( Age of Miracles ), and Rebecca Lee ( Bobcat and Other Stories ), among others, and has garnered critical claim from a range of outlets, including starred pre-pub reviews. The Bouncer is the first book in a series featuring “Joe the Bouncer.” We have the second title under contract. Gordon is a literary celebrity in Japan, where he won three awards for The Serialist : the Kono-Mys Award for Best Mystery in Translation, the Bunsun’s Best Mystery Award, and the Hayakawa Best Mystery Award. It was the first time in history that one book has won all three awards, and a subsequent Japanese feature film adaptation of the novel catapulted the book to the top of Japanese bestseller lists. Gordon is a visiting assistant professor in writing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and his work has appeared in The Paris Review , the Los Angeles Review of Books , Purple , Fence , and the New York Times Magazine (for which he wrote a piece called “Big in Japan”). Online promotion (davidmichaelgordon.com), Twitter @DavidGordonX