Slow Bullet -- John L. Lansdale

John L. Lansdale is the older brother of Joe Lansdale, and they've collaborated on a couple of books.  Most of John's work has been in comics, however.  He's only recently started writing, and he had quite an interesting and varied career before getting into the fiction game, a good bit of it in show business.

Slow Bullet is a straight-ahead thriller.  When Vietnam vet Clark McKay is notified of the "suicide" of a friend, he knows it's murder, and he sets out to find the killer.  The macguffin is a CIA file that the friend supposedly sent to McKay, although McKay doesn't have it and doesn't know where it is.  Not that it matters.  He becomes the target of everybody from the CIA to the mob.  

Lansdale tells the story in a stripped-down, bare-bones style, and it's almost all action with a high body count.  I lost count of the bodies, in fact,  and I even lost count of the number of times McKay is ambushed or attacked.  Things never slow down.  If there was ever a book where the protagonist faced one damned thing after another in rapid succession, this is the book.  If you're looking for character development, you've come to the wrong place.  This isn't about character; it's about action, and there's plenty of that.  Check it out.