Crime fiction writer George Pelecanos introduces Spero Lucas, an anti-hero making his place in the world one battle at a time. Includes a bonus work of short fiction focusing on Spero's early life. Spero Lucas has a new line of work. Since he returned home to Washington, D.C. after serving in Iraq, he has been doing special investigations for a defense attorney. He's good at it, and he has carved out a niche: recovering stolen property, no questions asked. His cut is forty percent. A high-profile crime boss who has heard of Lucas' specialty hires him to find out who has been stealing from his operation. It's the biggest job Spero has ever been offered, and he quickly gets a sense of what's going on. But before he can close in on what's been taken, he tangles with a world of men whose amorality and violence leave him reeling. Is any cut worth your family, your lover, your life? The first in a series of thrillers featuring Spero Lucas, The Cut is the latest confirmation of why George Pelecanos is "perhaps America's greatest living crime writer." (Stephen King)

Every man has his dark side . . . Spero Lucas confronts his own in the most explosive thriller yet from one of America's best-loved crime writers. The job seems simple retrieve the valuable painting — "The Double" — Grace Kinkaid's ex-boyfriend stole from her. It's the sort of thing Spero Lucas specializes finding what's missing, and doing it quietly. But Grace wants more. She wants Lucas to find the man who humiliated her—a violent career criminal with a small gang of brutal thugs at his beck and call. Lucas is a man who knows how to get what he wants, whether it's a thief on the run—or a married woman. In the midst of a steamy, passionate love affair that he knows can't last, in pursuit of a dangerous man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, Lucas is forced to decide what kind of man he is—and how far he'll go to get what he wants.