The Double

Every man has his dark side... Spero Lucas confronts his own in an explosive thriller from the writer of the award-winning THE WIRE.

Spero Lucas is a young Iraq war vet now working as a PI in Washington DC. He's hired by a young woman to find a painting she lost after being scammed by a super-smooth con-artist. Spero tracks the painting down, but the con-artist is part of a team of ruthless thugs, and the woman who hired Spero is brutally attacked as a warning to stay away.

The warning doesn't work. Spero is angry and he goes on the offensive, taking out the gang one by one. But where do Spero's remorseless killings sit on the morality scale? Is he defending an innocent woman? Or have his experiences of war turned him into a ruthless killer, no better than the crooks he's up against?

“Powerful - SHORTLISTGripping ... intensely moving - EVENING STANDARDLean, stirring, knife-edged - NEW YORK TIMESPelecanos displays a ferocious understanding of street reality and an empathy for America's downtrodden - GUARDIANGeorge Pelecanos is a stunningly good chronicler of the mean streets of Washington DC ... For anyone who has somehow missed out on Pelecanos, he is up there with Elmore Leonard and even Chandler for street dialogue and inner city settings, and there is always a pleasing moral undertow to his work - DAILY MAIL”

Powerful - SHORTLIST

Gripping ... intensely moving - EVENING STANDARD

Lean, stirring, knife-edged - NEW YORK TIMES

Pelecanos displays a ferocious understanding of street reality and an empathy for America's downtrodden - GUARDIAN

George Pelecanos is a stunningly good chronicler of the mean streets of Washington DC ... For anyone who has somehow missed out on Pelecanos, he is up there with Elmore Leonard and even Chandler for street dialogue and inner city settings, and there is always a pleasing moral undertow to his work - DAILY MAIL

George Pelecanos was born in Washington, D.C. in 1957. He worked as a line cook, dishwasher, bartender, and woman's shoe salesman before publishing his first novel in 1992.

Pelecanos is the author of twenty books set in and around Washington, D.C.: A Firing Offense, Nick's Trip, Shoedog, Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go, The Big Blowdown, King Suckerman, The Sweet Forever, Shame the Devil, Right as Rain, Hell to Pay, Soul Circus, Hard Revolution, Drama City, The Night Gardener, The Turnaround, The Way Home, The Cut, What It Was, The Double, and The Martini Shot. He has been the recipient of the Raymond Chandler award in Italy, the Falcon award in Japan, and the Grand Prix Du Roman Noir in France. Hell to Pay and Soul Circus were awarded the 2003 and 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. The Turnaround won the Hammett Prize for literary excellence in the field of crime writing. His fiction has appeared in Playboy, Esquire, and the collections Unusual Suspects, Best American Mystery Stories of 1997, Measures of Poison, Best American Mystery Stories of 2002, Men From Boys, and Murder at the Foul Line. He served as editor on the collections D.C. Noir and D.C. Noir 2: The Classics, as well as The Best Mystery Stories of 2008. He is an award-winning essayist who has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, GQ, Sight and Sound, Uncut, Mojo, and numerous other publications. Esquire magazine called him "the poet laureate of the D.C. crime world." In Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King wrote that Pelecanos is "perhaps the greatest living American crime writer." Pelecanos would like to point out that Mr. King used the word "perhaps."

Pelecanos was a producer, writer, and story editor for the acclaimed HBO dramatic series, The Wire, winner of the Peabody Award, the AFI Award, and the Edgar. He was nominated for an Emmy for his writing on that show. He was a writer and co-producer on the World War II miniseries The Pacific, produced by Steven Spielberg, and most recently worked as a writer and Executive Producer on the HBO series Treme.

Pelecanos lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is at work on his next novel.

Every man has his dark side... Spero Lucas confronts his own in an explosive thriller from the writer of the award-winning THE WIRE. Spero Lucas is a young Iraq war vet now working as a PI in Washington DC. He's hired by a young woman to find a painting she lost after being scammed by a super-smooth con-artist. Spero tracks the painting down, but the con-artist is part of a team of ruthless thugs, and the woman who hired Spero is brutally attacked as a warning to stay away.The warning doesn't work. Spero is angry and he goes on the offensive, taking out the gang one by one. But where do Spero's remorseless killings sit on the morality scale? Is he defending an innocent woman? Or have his experiences of war turned him into a ruthless killer, no better than the crooks he's up against?

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