8/14/198? Sleeping Dogs awake

August 14, 198?.  On August 14th in an unspecified year an American who calls himself Michael Shaeffer meets a beautiful aristocratic woman in London.  Schaeffer is actually the Butcher's Boy, the Mafia's favorite hit man until a mobster tried to cheat him  That made our hero cranky and that made the cheater dead.  

The Butcher's Boy gets spotted in London and he decides he needs to go back to the States to teach a refresher course to those thugs who think they need to kill him.  All he has to do is stay out of the way of the mob, the cops, the FBI, and the Justice Department.  Piece of cake...

Sleeping Dogs is the second of (so far) three novels by Thomas Perry about the terrifyingly efficient Butcher's Boy.  They are worth reading, and in order.