Caught Stealing: A Novel (Henry Thompson)
by By Huston, Charlie
Category: Fiction , Thrillers , Suspense

“[A] fantastically hopped-up thriller . . . a wrong-man plot worthy of Hitchcock.”—Entertainment Weekly (Editor’s Choice)It’s three thousand miles from the green fields of glory, where Henry “call me Hank”   Thompson once played California baseball, to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where   the tenements are old, the rents are high, and the drunks are dirty. But now Hank   is here, working as a bartender and taking care of a cat named Bud who is surely   going to get him killed. It begins when Hank’s neighbor, Russ, has to leave town   in a rush and hands over Bud in a carrier. But it isn’t until two Russians in tracksuits   drag Hank over the bar at the joint where he works and beat him to a pulp that he   starts to get the idea: 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-four   hours Hank is running over rooftops, swinging his old aluminum bat for the sweet   spot of a guy’s head, 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 two cowboys, two Russian mafia men, and some of the weirdest goons ever   assembled in one place. All because of Bud. All because once, in another life, in   another world, the only thing Hank wanted was to take third base—without getting   caught.