ANDY SAUNDERS KNOWS how to survive. He survived all alone in Los Angeles as a teenager, and he survived in foreign combat zones as a soldier. He survived homelessness on the streets of Phoenix, Arizona, an unforgiving desert metropolis that is the fifth-largest city in the nation. He's had enough of surviving, and now enjoys life, living with his girlfriend, working as a handyman, teaching martial arts and playing in a punk rock band. But, when a friend falls victim to a contract killing and the police do nothing, Saunders decides to make some inquiries-then finds that he has passed the point of no return, and that the killer is now hunting him. He once again must fight for survival, and the fight will lead him to a truth more awful than anything he has ever known. The wide open spaces of Arizona turn dark and claustrophobic in this hyperviolent, hypersexual neo-noir tale of seething cruelty and rationalized evil.