Stringer

Tim is a racquet stringer with a sideline selling drugs to the athletes and fans he meets traveling across Europe on the pro tennis circuit. He credits his success to maintaining a low profile—but not low enough to escape the notice of a crime lord in need of a courier to smuggle a duffle bag containing a half-million dollars’ worth of cocaine into the United States. Offered a choice between accepting the gig and gruesome death, Tim grabs the bag and embarks upon an increasingly harrowing adventure that finds him crossing paths with ruthless athletes, intelligence agents, warlords, hitmen, and heads of state. Author Kindlon’s (Frontiersman, Vol. 1) knack for witty banter and energetic plotting would have been better served by more dynamic or playful illustration than the gritty, occasionally cramped linework that Tucker provides, though Tucker does reveal a truly impressive sense of visual storytelling and design in a handful of incredibly ambitious and innovatively laid out sequences at key points in the story.