Literature is a disease. Meet the cure: ONE TOUGH BASTARD, unleashed this March, from author Adam Howe!
“ONE TOUGH BASTARD”
A novel by Adam Howe. Published by Honey Badger Press, 300 pages approx. Released March 1, 2021 (Kindle, TPB, and Audible)
In the tradition of ‘buddy cop’ partners Reggie Hammond & Jack Cates, Martin Riggs & Roger Murtaugh, and Ray Tango & Gabriel Cash, meet the odd-couple crime-fighters for the 21st century:
Shane Moxie: a washed-up 80s action star who refuses to believe his best days are behind him…
Duke: a hyper-intelligent chimpanzee and arguably the greatest animal actor of his generation…
SYNOPSIS
Once a hotshot action star, now a piping hot mess, Shane Moxie’s career has hit the skids since his 80s/90s heyday, when he headlined action classics like Amishing in Action, Gung Ho-Ho-Ho, and American Sumo.
Moxie’s biggest hit was ‘caveman cop’ action/comedy Copsicle, a smash at the 1997 summer box office, in which he co-starred with a chimpanzee. (The story of Moxie’s feud with Duke the chimp has become the stuff of Hollywood legend.)
While Duke’s career skyrocketed, Moxie’s went down the toilet. Now, desperate to resurrect his career, Moxie hopes that the 20th anniversary screening of Copsicle, where he and Duke will be reunited, will return him to the A-list.
But when Moxie and Duke are targeted by assassins, the feuding co-stars must reluctantly join forces to smash an organized crime syndicate comprised of the Mob, the Cartel, the Yakuza, and the Russian Mafiya, and headed by an iconic German action star dealing death from his movie-themed restaurant franchise.
One’s a big dumb animal, the other’s a chimpanzee: Shit just got real!
From Adam Howe, writer of Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet and Tijuana Donkey Showdown, and the winner of Stephen King’s On Writing contest, comes a ‘buddy’ comedy in the tradition of Lethal Weapon, 48 Hrs, and Tango & Cash, and a love letter to the gory glory days of 80s/90s action cinema. One Tough Bastard will turn you into a goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus… just like its author.
Includes the Shane Moxie filmography and poster gallery; a sensational interview with Cannon Films veteran, Sam American Ninja Firstenberg, who recalls the Moxie/Dudikoff beef, and recounts his experience directing The Mox in Direct to Video vigilante flick, Bleeding Heart, Smoking Gun; a Shane Moxie-approved workout mix (including tracks by King Kobra, Stan Bush, and Frank Stallone); and a disclaimer by the Central Intelligence Agency
AUTHOR’S STATEMENT
One Tough Bastard is a fist-bump to 80s/90s action movies, especially those of producer Joel Silver (Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, Predator, Roadhouse); mixed with the kind of ‘Big Dumb Comedies’ Hollywood used to make without fear of causing offense. This is the Ready Player One for action movie fans, or “Lethal Weapon meets Ted,” filled with Easter eggs from your favorite action flicks.
The lead character – I hesitate to use the word ‘hero’ – Shane Moxie (aka The Mox) is a fusion of Kenny Powers, Steven Seagal, and Jack Burton from Big Trouble in Little China… a legend in his own mind, and a magnet for trouble.
With the characters of Moxie and his chimpanzee partner, Duke, I riffed on the dynamic between Jack Burton and Wang in Big Trouble, a blowhard ‘hero’ and his more capable ‘sidekick,’ leaving the reader to decide which of the two is the book’s eponymous “tough bastard.”
PRAISE FOR “ONE TOUGH BASTARD”
“This book is a beast, an amphetamine wet dream Golan-Globus jackoff shot out of The Cannon Group and left to ferment on the wall until such a time as this. If Adam Howe were a man of science and learning our children may have had a better world, but instead he’s obsessed with the same action, horror, fucking buddy comedy bullshit trash movies that I am and things worked out better for me this way. This is my Sunset Boulevard, my Once Upon a Time … in Blockbuster alternate history where the action icons of my youth didn’t become respectable or get elected to public office, but went out as they arrived; oiled up and guns blazing. This book reads like Shane Black and Joe Eszterhas and Michael Winner and Joseph Zito met in the crossroads of the world’s longest coke-line like Lady & the Tramp eating spaghetti only they fought to the death over the meatball.” – Jedidiah Ayres @ Hardboiled Wonderland, author of Peckerwood
“Without exaggeration, one of the funniest stories of the 21st century. This is everything that an homage to an era should be. A kaleidoscope of a meta retro action comedy buddy cop plot, with a protagonist equally as stylish. Combines all the key elements of the action hero era and puts them into one original package that makes for source material all its own. If treated with the same amount of respect and effort as Adam Howe has done here, a film adaptation could easily become the greatest of any throwback to this era ever created.” – Nathan Phillips, The Action Elite
“TWO BIG THUMBS UP! One Tough Bastard is a smart, funny, witty, neo-noir-meta-action-spectacle-page-turner! A true original work that echoes the best of Shane Black and Quentin Tarantino, a passionate love letter to Hollywood dreams and action cinema of the 80s and 90s, and the ultimate holy grail for any fan of action! Without a doubt one of the best reads I’ve EVER had!” – Marko Mäkilaakso, director of It Came from the Desert and War of the Dead
EXCERPT: MEET “THE MOX”
“He was dressed karate-casual in a black Gi shirt emblazoned with Chinese dragons, tucked into skintight stonewash Levis slashed at the knees, thighs and ass cheeks. The Gi shirt was sleeveless, showing off chunkily muscled arms inked with a medley of Special Forces tattoos. A red Wing Chun sash was threaded through the belt loop of his jeans, though he was, of course, a black belt in kung fu, and numerous other martial arts, including his own style, which was something akin to Jeet Kune Do meets a John Wayne barroom brawl; the red sash was purely a fashion statement, and a formidable one at that. His feet were clad in orange and black Gila lizard boots with stacked heels and ninja star spurs. The knuckles of his left and right hands were tattooed with COLD and DEAD in honor of his stint as posterboy for the NRA – not that he needed a firearm; his hands alone were registered lethal weapons. He wore a bike chain necklace, adorned with four wedding rings – no woman could tame this lone wolf – a gold-plated Megalodon tooth, and an M67 hand grenade converted into a liquor flask filled with Wild Turkey 101. From one pierced ear hung a 12-gauge shotgun shell. An Injun dreamcatcher dangled from the other. Then there was the hair… just how to describe the hair? Imagine Mötley Crüe, Dog the Bounty Hunter, and Sax Man from The Lost Boys pulled a train on Vidal Sassoon. Up top was a glam-metal rooster crest, buzzed to the scalp at the sides, the mullet flaring like the mane of a battle-hardened alpha lion, the plaited rat’s-tail streaming down his spine. He was fifty-six years old, a youthful fifty-six, if he said so himself, with a self-proclaimed playing age of thirty-five to forty-nine, maybe even fifty for the right role, like a part in the next Expendables picture – all Sly had to do was pick up the phone. He was a pound or two or even twenty above the fighting trim of his glory days, carrying the weight mostly in his gut, but wearing it well, like your average long-haul trucker or league bowler. His cornflower-blue eyes were shielded by prescription ballistic glasses, cornered with crow’s-feet, and set in the perpetual squint of an Old West gunfighter or chronic onanist. He had resisted the temptation of cosmetic surgery – cost was admittedly a factor – preferring to mature naturally, and with his dignity intact. His craggy features, tanned the noble napalmed hue of the 45th President, belied a life lived hard and fast and by his own rules, which was the only way he knew how to live, and the only way worth living. This was a man who clearly knew who he was… And that was Shane fuckin’ Moxie.”
