Your Day in the Barrel

"Roger Levy, the protagonist of Alan Furst's fast-moving and funny suspense novel, is an enterprising young man in business for himself. In fact, his is a kind of modern American success story, although it just happens that his business is dealing dope around the various colleges and universities in Pennsylvania. So when he is stopped, his van searched and his "merchandise" discovered by the Pennsylvania police, he has no choice but to appear to cooperate when offered his freedom in exchange for complicity in an apparent CIA murder scheme. Back home in New York the chase is on, and it is only with the help of his lawyer, his street sense and a lot of his own hard-earned cash that Levy is finally able to identify and evade the enemy, uncover the unlikely source of the plot and come away with enough capital to fulfill his own version of the American dream--to retire and live above his own Chinese restaurant, its kitchen available to him twenty-four hours a day. Set in the last days of the sixties, Your Day in the Barrel is at once a fond spoof of the suspense genre and a fiercely contemporary thriller told in the truly original voice of a young writer making his highly auspicious debut." -- Book jacket flap.