Toussaint Batiste doesn’t care much for being addressed by his nickname, “Troubleman,” or “Trouble” for short. But having just finished a stretch in prison for involuntary manslaughter committed while he was still with the Philadelphia PD, Toussaint can’t seem to be anywhere, not even in a car belonging to the son of a trusted friend, without trouble finding him. The car—or in street parlance, “whip”—belongs to Jay-Jay Wei, son of John Wei, owner of a successful restaurant in the city’s Chinatown district, who’s offering Toussaint a job and a place to live in gratitude for having saved him from a protection racket. Jay-Jay’s taking Toussaint to his parents’ house, but first he’s stopping to make a bag drop with some unsavory characters who, it turns out, will kill them both if Toussaint doesn’t take some quick and brutal defensive measures. It’s only the beginning of Toussaint’s harrowing reintroduction to the not-so-brotherly street life in the City of Brotherly Love. Before long, Jay-Jay is arrested for murder, his distraught father is contemplating taking matters into his own hands with his .22-caliber pistol, and Toussaint, who only wants to be left alone to make his own, preferably peaceable way back into society, now finds he must navigate by fair, foul, and mostly violent means through the city’s Black and Chinese underworlds while dealing with his one-time co-workers in the police department, including the sultry Sgt. Natasha Dobbs, who seems to hanker being more to him than an inside source. To say the least, there’s a whole lot of page-turning stuff packed in this latest thriller from K’wan, who in addition to an aptitude for orchestrating and propelling action sequences, displays a knack for colorfully droll dialogue and antic set pieces bordering on the surreal. He seems to be channeling Elmore Leonard, Walter Mosley, and Chester Himes in one rollicking stream.