Four of Irwin Dressler's old gangster colleagues have put together a national tour of once-popular rock bands they own a piece of: three nights of concerts by guys (and a few gals) who were big shots back in the 1960s and 1970s, and who are now hoping for one more gasp of glory with this nostalgia exhibition. But it turns out that someone --- one of Dressler’s own colleagues --- is using the tour as a front to steal Dressler's money. Now the tour has pulled into LA, and Junior Bender has one weekend to figure out who's to blame --- a weekend that begins with his tires being slashed, threatening notes left on his car, and a theatrical backdrop falling on a drummer during the truly terrible first set of the first concert.

Eight years ago, Poke Rafferty, an American travel writer, and his Thai wife, Rose, adopted a Bangkok street child named Miaow, forming an unconventional intercultural family. But now that family is in jeopardy. The birth of Poke and Rose’s newborn son has littered their small apartment with emotional land mines, forcing Poke to question his identity as a dad and Miaow to question her identity as a daughter. At the same time, the most cantankerous member of the small gang of Old Bangkok Hands who hang out at the Expat Bar suddenly goes missing under suspicious circumstances. Engaged in the search for the missing American, Poke is caught completely off-guard when someone he thought was gone forever resurfaces --- and she has the power to tear the Raffertys apart.

Los Angeles burglar Junior Bender and his girlfriend, Ronnie, are in desperate need of cash to hire a kidnapper to snatch Ronnie’s two-year-old son back from her ex. A nameless woman in an orange wig has offered Junior 50 grand to break into the abandoned house of a recently deceased 97-year-old recluse, Daisy Horton, and steal a doll from her collection. Junior figures there must be something hidden inside the doll that can get him in a heap of trouble. It doesn’t take long for him to realize that he’s not the only one looking for the doll. When an old friend ends up murdered, Junior decides he will stop at nothing to figure out who the woman in the orange wig is, and why she wants the doll badly enough to leave a trail of bodies in her wake.

The two most difficult days in Bangkok writer Poke Rafferty’s life begin with an emergency visit from Edward Dell, the almost-boyfriend of Poke’s teenage daughter, Miaow. The boy’s father, Buddy, a late-middle-aged womanizer who has moved to Bangkok for happy hunting, has disappeared, and money is being siphoned out of his bank and credit card accounts. It soon becomes apparent that Buddy is in the hands of a pair of killers who prey on Bangkok’s “sexpats”; when his accounts are empty, he’ll be found, like a dozen others before him, floating facedown in a Bangkok canal. His money is almost gone. Over 48 frantic hours, Poke does everything he can to locate Buddy before it’s too late.

Junior Bender, divorced father of one and burglar extraordinaire, finds himself stuck inside the Edgerton Mall, and not just as a last-minute shopper. The murderous Russian mobster who owns the place has decided it takes a thief to catch a thief and hires Junior --- under threat --- to solve the mall’s shoplifting problem for him. But Junior’s surveillance operation doesn’t go well: as Christmas Eve approaches, two people are dead, and it’s obvious that shoplifting is the least of the mall’s problems. To prevent further deaths, possibly including his own, Junior must confront his dread of Christmas --- both present and past.

Los Angeles’s most talented burglar, Junior Bender, is in the middle of stealing one of the world’s rarest stamps from a professional killer when his luck suddenly turns sour. It takes an unexpected assist to get him out alive, but his escape sets off a chain reaction of blackmail, strong-arming and escalating crime. By the time Junior is forced to commit his third burglary of the week --- in the impregnable fortress that’s home to the ruthless studio mogul called King Maybe --- he’s beginning to wish he’d just let the killer take a crack at him.

Back when Poke Rafferty first arrived in Bangkok to write a travel guide, some of the old-timers in the Expat Bar on Patpong Road helped him make sense of the city. Now these men --- many of whom have been living in Southeast Asia since the Vietnam War --- have grown old and, in some cases, frail. When a talkative stranger named Arthur Varney turns up, they accept him without suspicion, failing to see that he’s actually using them to get to Poke. Varney wants two things: money Poke doesn’t have and a person Poke is unwilling to hand over.

After seven years in Bangkok, American travel writer Poke Rafferty finally feels settled. All that is endangered when his adopted daughter, Miaow, helps her boyfriend buy a stolen iPhone that contains photographs of two murdered police officers. As Miaow’s carefully constructed personal life falls apart, Rafferty discovers that the murders are part of a conspiracy that reaches the top rungs of Bangkok law enforcement and beyond.

Junior Bender, the clown prince of crime fiction, returns in his most hard-boiled adventure yet --- a tale that will take him deep into a murderous conspiracy in present-day Los Angeles and uncover an increasingly confusing legacy of his burglar-mentor, Herbie Mott, who, until very recently, was always one step ahead of just about everybody.

Few people can say no to 93-year-old Irwin Dressler, Hollywood’s scariest mob boss-turned-movie king. Dressler wants LA burglar Junior Bender to solve a “crime” committed over 60 years ago, when his friend Dolores La Marr’s career was destroyed over some controversial photos of her at a Las Vegas party. What Junior finds as he starts digging is that some vendettas never die --- they only get more dangerous.

An accidental collision on a Bangkok sidewalk goes very wrong when the man who ran into Rafferty dies in his arms, but not before saying three words: Helen Eckersley. Cheyenne. Seconds later, the police arrive, denying that the man was shot. As he learns more about his situation, it becomes apparent that he's been caught on the margins of the war on terror, and that his opponent is a virtuoso artist whose medium is fear.

LA burglar Junior Bender is being bullied into proving that aging music industry mogul Vinnie DiGaudio is innocent of the murder of a nasty tabloid journalist he had threatened to kill. It doesn’t help that the dead journalist’s pretty widow is trying to get Junior to mix pleasure with business. Just as the investigation is spiraling out of control, Junior's hard-drinking landlady begs him to solve the disappearance of her daughter, who got involved with a very questionable character.

Junior Bender is a Los Angeles burglar with a magic touch. Since he first started breaking into houses when he was 14 years old, he’s never once been caught. But now, after 22 years of an exemplary career, Junior has been blackmailed by Trey Annunziato, one of the most powerful crime bosses in LA, into acting as a private investigator on the set of Trey’s porn movie venture, which someone keeps sabotaging.

An accidental collision on a Bangkok sidewalk goes very wrong when the man who ran into Poke Rafferty dies in his arms, but not before saying three words: Helen Eckersley. Cheyenne. Little does Rafferty know that he's about to be caught on the margins of the war on terror, and that his opponent is a virtuoso artist whose medium is fear.