Finalist, 2025 Reader Views Reviewers’ Choice Award The Catalogue wasn’t meant to exist. It’s a classified registry of the world’s deadliest mercenaries—operatives embedded across governments, corporations, and criminal syndicates. And it’s been stolen. When a brutal homicide in the Catskills of New York exposes ties to a clandestine mercenary network known only as V.E.N.O.M. (Veiled and Exclusive Nation of Organized Mercenaries), NYPD detective Jake Penny is drawn into a covert conflict far beyond rural crime scenes and police tape. As bodies surface and operatives mobilize to recover the stolen file, Jake is pulled into a shadow war he recognizes more than he should. Intelligence agencies scramble to contain the breach. A ruthless NSA handler begins tightening the perimeter. And someone inside the network believes Jake knows far too much. The deeper he digs, the clearer the danger becomes: in the world of V.E.N.O.M., exposure isn’t containment. It’s elimination.