Former southern rocker, now P.I., Nicholas Colt finds himself drawn into a real life version of a video game.

Snuff Tag 9 allows one to pick a character and participate in a fight to the death on a remote island. One picks two weapons from a list of ten, entirely at random, and must defend themselves against seven other contestants. Along toward the end, a ninth enters the game. There are twenty levels to get through. No one has ever reached the twentieth and only four have made it to the nineteenth. Rumor has it that last level puts one in combat with the insane billionaire behind the whole thing, a man known only as Freeze.

Colt takes a job for a rich accountant who received a letter telling him to report to a certain area at a certain time to play the real Snuff Tag 9. Refuse and you die. Go to the police and you die. Colt shows up and is grabbed, but only after his client’s severed head bounces off his windshield.

Rules are exactly the same, except this is no video game. There’s even an insane billionaire calling himself Freeze. And Colt is about twenty years older than the other contestants and in worse shape. He’s fifty years old. Compliance to the game is forced by a defibrillator implanted in each contestant’s chest that will instantly shoot a large electrical charge into the heart if rules are violated or one stray outside defined boundaries.

The weapons Colt randomly picks are pepper spray and a combat knife. There are much better weapons in the ten.

Our hero is forced to kill or be killed, staying alive as he tries to figure a way out of this mess.

Not a bad thriller here and can be found HERE.