A gritty urban crime thriller from one of the award-winning writers of THE WIRE.

A gritty urban crime thriller from one of the award-winning writers of THE WIRE.

Like most of the trouble in Nick Stefanos' life, it started with a drink.

Lying in the darkness, drunk and immobile, Nick hears two men murder a terrified teenager. When he wakes in the morning, his memory is blurred. But the dead boy is still there, submerged in the river.

The police presume it's a gang-killing - no shortage of them in DC. But Nick isn't sure; gangs don't use silencers. Hit men do. Despite not having worked a PI case for a year and a half, Nick starts investigating, driven by an obsessive need for the truth. And with each clue he unearths, he's driven further into the darkest corners of the human soul.

The third novel in the Nick Stefanos series.

"The coolest writer in America" - GQ

"His books will burn into your brain like no others" - WASHINGTON POST

"Author of over 18 critically lauded novels...his reputation rests on a bedrock of tight, fast-paced prose, meticulous plotting, finely tuned characters and an incredible authenticity in depicting time and place...This is a writer in full control of his material and fully understanding of his strengths. Lovers of crime fiction should not miss what he has to say" - IRISH EXAMINER

"As aficionados of THE WIRE will attest, Pelecanos is a peerless chronicler of the black urban underclass...entertainingly rewarding" - SUNDAY EXPRESS on What It Was

"THE WIRE writer George Pelecanos has a way with words that only seems to be getting meaner and swankier" - METRO