Conrad Navarro is the ur-Barron protagonist. Not merely macho, he's so damn macho he fights in a secret death tournaments for a living, and he's probably a genius and an artist too, if he ever put his mind to it. When not twisting limbs off animals and men for the entertainment of depraved rich folk he hunts the world for his vanished sister, an FBI agent obsessed with finding the man who probably murdered their brother. The hunt is peeling back a few layers of the world and reality best left undisturbed, but Conrad is too far along the road to hell to turn back now.

Beautiful writing, glamorous locations, seedy squalor, monstrous experiments and dark hungry gods living amongst us - Barron blends it all together into a heady and frightful brew. It's all fantastically hard-boiled and grand guignol and soul-laceratingly cosmic, exactly what you'd hope for in a Laird Barron novella.