If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... Ethan Reckless.

"The A-Team" is reimagined with head writer Richard Stark putting a 1980s troubleshooter in situations whose solutions do not require a MacGyver device or a Magnum Ferrari. No, the only Equalizer here is a complete lack of conscience . . . and maybe a hatchet.

Reckless suffered a traumatic brain injury while involved with an offshoot of the Weather Underground in the 1970s that left him with memory gaps and distanced from feeling most emotions. A decade later he spends his time surfing the California waves, only working as an unlicensed private investigator, "Solving problems for people," when he runs out of money and the client interests him. Like the old girlfriend who just called.

Brubaker and Phillips deliver another gripping crime story -- the start of a new series -- stumbling only with an underwhelming and undercutting reveal in the final pages. ( )