'San Francisco, 1978. Sam Riddell is visiting his brother en route to a long-awaited adventure in Central America and points south. But from his first night at Curtis’s fashionable apartment, the visit turns lethal. He is soon embroiled in a savage world of gun-running and drug-dealing, a world softened only by the presence of Sally, the enigmatic English girlfriend whom Curtis neglects.
'Events multiply with alarming speed. Curtis sends Sam and Sally to the highlands of Guatemala to deal with a deranged dictator, who regularly executes rebellious underlings. They escape with their lives, only to return to mayhem back home, where the fruits of Curtis’s machinations have become dangerously overripe.
'From the opening pages of The King, anything goes. A cross country flight in a camper van see Sam and Sally pursued by a hired killer. Five years on, they reinvent themselves as New York sophisticates. But the shadow cast by Curtis and his enemies is long and, in the end, threatens everything they have built together.' (Publication summary)
