Night Fever

Stricken by insomnia while on a business trip to an unnamed European city, U.S. publishing executive Jonathan Webb walks through the night, contemplating his general dissatisfaction with life. He wanders into a party in an underground nightclub, where he befriends Rainer, a mysterious, charismatic raconteur who becomes his guide through a lawless, nocturnal world of lavish soirees, mind-altering drugs, and wanton violence. It’s all thrilling until Rainer’s influence leads Webb to commit an act of violence that threatens his professional standing and, more importantly, the safety of his wife and children. After five entries in two years of their bestselling series Reckless, Brubaker and Phillips present a stand-alone noir thriller about a man forced to reckon with the consequences of indulging the primal impulses lurking within the darkest corners of his soul. Brubaker’s masterfully hardboiled scripting is both unnervingly nihilistic and propulsively thrilling, and Phillips’s illustration has rarely evoked such nuances of character or absolute menace.