(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.
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QUESTION: According to the article, what is specifically different about how Washington DC (and its people) is portrayed in Pelecanos's stories to the typical portrayal?

From Babylon, Alexander went to Susa, one of the Achaemenid capitals, and captured its legendary treasury. He sent the bulk of his army to the Persian ceremonial capital of Persepolis via the Royal Road. Alexander himself took selected troops on the direct route to the city. He had to storm the pass of the Persian Gates (in the modern Zagros Mountains) which had been blocked by a Persian army under Ariobarzanes and then hurried to Persepolis before its garrison could loot the treasury. On entering Persepolis, Alexander allowed his troops to loot the city for several days. Alexander stayed in Persepolis for five months. During his stay a fire broke out in the eastern palace of Xerxes and spread to the rest of the city. Possible causes include a drunken accident or deliberate revenge for the burning of the Acropolis of Athens during the Second Persian War.
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QUESTION: What are the possible causes to the incident that began at the Xerxes palace?

While Nashiri was in Afghanistan, Nibras and Khamri saw their chance. They piloted the explosives-laden boat alongside the USS Cole, made friendly gestures to crew members, and detonated the bomb. Quso did not arrive at the apartment in time to film the attack. Back in Afghanistan, Bin Laden anticipated U.S. military retaliation. He ordered the evacuation of al Qaeda's Kandahar airport compound and fled- first to the desert area near Kabul, then to Khowst and Jalalabad, and eventually back to Kandahar. In Kandahar, he rotated between five to six residences, spending one night at each residence. In addition, he sent his senior advisor, Mohammed Atef, to a different part of Kandahar and his deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, to Kabul so that all three could not be killed in one attack. There was no American strike. In February 2001, a source reported that an individual whom he identified as the big instructor (probably a reference to Bin Laden) complained frequently that the United States had not yet attacked. According to the source, Bin Laden wanted the United States to attack, and if it did not he would launch something bigger. The attack on the USS Cole galvanized al Qaeda's recruitment efforts. Following the attack, Bin Laden instructed the media committee, then headed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to produce a propaganda video that included a reenactment of the attack along with images of the al Qaeda training camps and training methods; it also highlighted Muslim suffering in Palestine, Kashmir, Indonesia, and Chechnya. Al Qaeda's image was very important to Bin Laden, and the video was widely disseminated. Portions were aired on Al Jazeera, CNN, and other television outlets. It was also disseminated among many young men in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and caused many extremists to travel to Afghanistan for training and jihad. Al Qaeda members considered the video an effective tool in their struggle for preeminence among other Islamist and jihadist movements.
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QUESTION: Where did Nibras and Khamri attack the USS Cole?

Literary career During the war Camus joined the French Resistance cell Combat, which published an underground newspaper of the same name. This group worked against the Nazis, and in it Camus assumed the nom de guerre Beauchard. Camus became the paper's editor in 1943. He first met Sartre at the dress rehearsal of Sartre's play, The Flies, in June 1943. When the Ailies liberated Paris in August 1944, Camus witnessed and reported the last of the fighting. Soon after the event on 6 August 1945, he was one of the few French editors to publicly express opposition and disgust to the United States' dropping the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. He resigned from Combat in 1947 when it became a commercial paper. After the war, Camus began frequenting the Cafe de Flore on the Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris with Sartre and others. He also toured the United States to lecture about French thought. Although he leaned left, politically, his strong criticisms of Communist doctrine did not win him any friends in the Communist parties and eventually alienated Sartre. In 1949, his tuberculosis returned, whereupon he lived in seclusion for two years. In 1951, he published The Rebel, a philosophical analysis of rebellion and revolution which expressed his rejection of communism. Upsetting many of his colleagues and contemporaries in France, the book brought about the final split with Sartre. The dour reception depressed Camus; he began to translate plays. Camus's first significant contribution to philosophy was his idea of the absurd. He saw it as the result of our desire for clarity and meaning within a world and condition that offers neither, which he expressed in The Myth of Sisyphus and incorporated into many of his other works, such as The Stranger and The Plague. Despite his split from his "study partner", Sartre, Camus was still categorized as an Existentialist. He specifically rejected that label in his essay "Enigma" and elsewhere.
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QUESTION:
What label assigned to him did Camus reject?