The Haul : A Heist Novel by Gary Phillips Published 14 July 2026

After decades of close calls, O'Conner-the former 'Warlord of Willow Ridge'-spends most of his time in semi-retirement, running his legitimate businesses and playing pickleball. Except for his longtime girlfriend, no one in his wealthy suburb is the wiser to his double-life.

But O'Conner's past refuses to stay there, and when he is approached with a job he can't resist, he agrees to mastermind his biggest score yet: a multi-million-dollar raid of a tech billionaire's secret bunker, which is hidden underneath his newly constructed basketball arena. As the job goes down, testing O'Conner's mettle with new challenges, the promise of the score attracts ghosts from his past that he thought were long buried.

 Interwoven with flashbacks to O'Conner's coming-of-age in Southern Los Angeles, this pulse-pounding crime novel is both an homage to Donald Westlake's Parker series and a rich portrait of a morally gray thief at a crossroads.