Who or What is The Battered Butterfly? What do you get if you cross Mike Hammer with Ignatius Reilly? Meet Lefty Markowitz Lefty, an ex-New York cop turned professional gambler, is two hundred and eighty pounds of misanthropy on the prowl in Manila. All he wants is to be left alone. But when a bar girl is murdered Lefty becomes the prime suspect, and everyone is after him. Pursued by Chinese triads, Japanese Yakuza, a Filipino sparrow squad, a corrupt senator and his bodyguards, an overeager reporter, and a psychotic police captain, Lefty must find the real killer before his pursuers find...