(CNN) -- Horror-meister, Stephen King calls George Pelecanos "perhaps the greatest living American crime writer." His stories are set in Pelecanos' hometown of Washington, D.C., but this is not the side of the U.S. capitol that you see portrayed on TV with white marble monuments, lawyers and lobbyists. Pelecanos is more interested in working families struggling to get by, the racial tensions in its ethnic neighborhoods and the low-lifes on the edges. His crime-writing peers call Pelecanos the "undisputed poet" of Washington's gritty side. The best-selling and award-winning author is out this week with his 17th and latest novel, "The Cut." It's the first in a new series featuring Iraq war veteran and private investigator Spero Lucas. When he's not working for a Washington defense attorney, Lucas recovers stolen property for a 40% cut. Now, a high-profile crime boss hires Lucas to find out who's been stealing from him, and it could turn out to be Lucas' biggest payday or an untimely end. While Pelecanos made his bones in the noir tradition, there's a definite "Western" feel to "The Cut." The new novel takes place in a morally gray and often violent world. It's peppered with pitch-perfect dialogue and captures the sights, sounds and taste of Washington in rich detail. In short, Pelecanos reads like the real deal. Pelecanos knows a thing or two about capturing the authenticity of urban America with an ethnically and socially diverse cast. In addition to his success as a novelist, Pelecanos is a producer and writer for HBO's New Orleans-set, "Treme." He was previously a producer and Emmy-nominated writer on the hit series "The Wire" and the miniseries "The Pacific." Read an excerpt from "The Cut" CNN recently spoke to Pelecanos about his new novel. The following is an edited transcript. CNN: Tell me more about your new character, Spero Lucas.
What question would one ask from this paragraph?
Answer: What three shows has Pelecanos been a writer for?

Representing yourself in court can be a tricky endeavor. There are confusing legal terms to learn, strict procedures to follow and volumes of case law that often need to be understood to prepare a case. Lake County officials and a private agency that assists indigent litigants in Illinois want to make the practice easier by creating a self-help center for people who choose to represent themselves in legal matters. The center, which will be housed in the law library at the main courthouse in Waukegan, could open later this summer. "I think it's going to be extremely helpful," Court Administrator Bob Zastany said. "There is a population out there that will take advantage of this resource." The self-help center will be the only one of its kind in the county. Only a few operate nationwide, officials said. The project is the work of Lake County circuit court officials and Prairie State Legal Services, a statewide agency with an office in Waukegan that provides information and legal assistance to poor and elderly Illinois residents. The organization has received a $25,000 grant from the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation, a nonprofit group that funds programs designed to increase access to legal information and assistance, to help pay for the effort. Prairie State will share the money with the county. The county's law library is on the first floor of the governmental center at 18 N. County St. The new self-help center will be designed to help litigants find the information they need to properly represent themselves in court, an undertaking that can be complicated and confusing. "Some people can do OK on their own, and some people can do OK with some help," said Linda Rothnagel, the managing attorney for Prairie State Legal Services. "But other people can't do it. It's not always easy." Self-representation is a right affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The practice is far more common in civil matters than in criminal cases. In fact, self-represented litigants - formally called "pro se" in Latin, or "for oneself" - in criminal defenses are so rare that statistics about the practice generally are not kept, legal experts say.
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Answer: Who is creating the self-help center which will be housed in the law library at 18 N. County Street?

Jenny was a 13 year old girl with blond hair and blue eyes. She had gotten out of her last day of school and was free for the summer. Two of her friends were going to the nearby beach to do some swimming and enjoy the sun. Jenny went with them and when they got there the beach was very full and there were people everywhere. They changed into their bathing suits and went to the water. The water was very cold. They chose not swim and walked to the sand. Then they laid down on some towels and enjoyed the sun. After several hours Jenny and her friends fell asleep. They woke up and the sun was beginning to set. When Jenny sat up she found that it was painful to touch her skin. When she looked down she saw that she had a very bad sunburn. Her friends were also very badly sunburned so they went home. Jenny's mother gave her a cream to put on the sunburn. Afterwards she felt a lot better and went to sleep.
What question would one ask from this paragraph?
Answer: What did Jenny just get out of?

Over the centuries, the living here has always been easy enough to attract a steady stream of immigrants. Bountiful food sources might have made Malaysia an inviting place for the contemporaries of Java Manin 230,000 b.c. But thus far, the country's earliest traces of homo sapiens, found in the Niah Caves of northern Sarawak, are fragments of a skull dating to 40,000 b.c. On the peninsula, the oldest human-related relics (10,000 b.c. ) are Stone Age tools of the Negritos. These small, dark Melanesians are related in type to Australian aborigines and are confined today to the forests of the northern highlands. By 2,000 b.c. , these timid, gentle nomads hunting with bow and arrow were driven back from the coasts by waves of sturdy immigrants arriving in outrigger canoes equipped with sails. Mongolians from South China and Polynesian and Malay peoples from the Philippines and the Indonesian islands settled along the rivers of the peninsula and northern Borneo. They practiced a slash-and-burn agriculture of yams and millet, a technique that exhausted the soil and imposed a semi-nomadic existence from one jungle clearing to another. Families lived in wooden longhouses like those still to be seen today among the Iban peoples of Sarawak. Another unit was added on to the communal dwelling each time a marriage created a new family. Other tough migrants from the South Seas settled along the coastssailors, fishermen, traders (for the most part pirates)known euphemistically as orang laut (sea people).
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Answer:
What did the Mongolians and Malay do to the Negritos?