The year is 1987, and outlaw Ray Diamond's mother Lorna is the queenpin of a cesspool of crime and perversion in Mystic, Georgia. When Ray is discharged from the Navy in San Diego, he absconds with a .45, planning to rob and drug deal his way east to his hometown. But when Ray arrogantly knocks over a mob-connected El Paso liquor store, he doesn't count on the owner's psychotic son Eli dogging his trail, and his life corkscrews deep into nightmare.

Chris D. began watching yakuza films, writing the initial drafts of GUN AND SWORD, the definitive encyclopedia of the Golden Age of Japanese gangster films, in 1990. In 1997, he traveled to Japan, doing research and collecting illustrations. With 95% of the main text completed in 2002, several publishers were interested but only if the book was cut by 300 pages. It still took another ten years for this astounding reference guide to come to final fruition in its unexpurgated form - a fount of fascinating insights and information for both the seasoned Japanese genre film fan and the curious...