Background & Literary Work 

When an ordinary man is thrust into the dangerous world of smuggling at America’s northern border, he risks his own freedom to protect refugees from violent immigration policing.

Soon after conservative businessman Bob Boulé opens the Smuggler’s Inn, a quirky bed-and-breakfast directly on the US-Canada border, refugees, drug traffickers, and ICE agents all trust him with their secrets. The refugees tell Bob heartbreaking stories of persecution and death. The drug traffickers and ICE agents try to recruit him to their side in the dangerous game of smuggling at the border. Bob is forced to make a series of risky decisions that draw him deeper and deeper into the murky border underworld, putting his own freedom at risk. Bob’s secret life comes crashing down after a violent confrontation with a Border Patrol agent, leading him to question his core beliefs as he finds his true purpose in life. 

From the Taliban-controlled countryside of Afghanistan to the infamous La Joya prison in Panama, the stories featured in Smuggler converge in the misty forests of the Pacific Northwest in the borderlands between Seattle and Vancouver. There are car chases, drug deals, and over a thousand people who slip quietly across the border to safety in the dead of night. After the confrontation with the Border Patrol agent, Bob’s complaint goes all the way to the US Supreme Court, whose landmark decision in Egbert v. Boule paves the way for the apparent impunity of ICE agents on American streets. 

SMUGGLER by Reece Jones and Greg Boos is "a most anticipated book of 2026" according to Inkstick Media and will be published October 20, 2026, with Prometheus Press. HBO has optioned the TV and film rights for a scripted series.