Alfred ‘Break’ Underwood is under siege.

He peeked in the wrong window during lunch hour and is now in a fight for his life against a killer-for-hire cop. But the only thing he knows about fighting is how to annoy his opponent with stupid pranks and distractions, the way he did on his high school tennis team.

His new boss hates him, and he’s already been fired from his first three jobs since college. His home mortgage is underwater, savings are gone, and prospects for new employment don’t exist. One slipup at work, and he’ll be living under a bridge and pushing a shopping cart.

Six months after his divorce, his policy of ‘no relationships’ is losing ground to a heart-melting pair of brown eyes.

Spiritual guidance is coming from a thousand-year-old Zen Buddhist monk hanging off a cliff.

And the only way he’s going to survive—with life and livelihood intact—is to, for the first time in his life, quit clowning around.