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Cutman:
Joe Ellison runs his law practice out of a boxing gym locker room in Brindle, a town that stopped pretending it was thriving a long time ago. His clients are the fighters, hustlers, and lost causes nobody uptown wants to touch. It's not glamorous work, but it's honest, and it pays the bills his own boxing career never managed to.
Then Marcus Petrillo walks in wearing handcuffs.
Marcus is a middleweight with real talent and a temper that's put men on the canvas before, and now he's charged with murdering the promoter who controlled every fight card in three counties. The evidence looks clean. A fingerprint. A threat made in front of witnesses. A motive anyone in town could recite from memory.
Joe knows exactly how this looks. He also knows looks lie, especially in a town where the same handful of men have been quietly running the sport, and everything attached to it, for decades.
The deeper he digs, the less this case is about one dead promoter and the more it looks like something built over twenty a rigged sport, buried money, and a conviction nobody was ever supposed to question again. Every person who tries to help him ends up hurt, missing, or scared into silence.
Joe has spent his whole life working other people's corners. This is the first fight he can't walk away from between rounds, and the first one where losing doesn't just cost a client his freedom. It costs Joe everything he has left.
For fans of The Lincoln Lawyer and Presumed Innocent, a twisty legal thriller with a fighter's heart.
Then Marcus Petrillo walks in wearing handcuffs.
Marcus is a middleweight with real talent and a temper that's put men on the canvas before, and now he's charged with murdering the promoter who controlled every fight card in three counties. The evidence looks clean. A fingerprint. A threat made in front of witnesses. A motive anyone in town could recite from memory.
Joe knows exactly how this looks. He also knows looks lie, especially in a town where the same handful of men have been quietly running the sport, and everything attached to it, for decades.
The deeper he digs, the less this case is about one dead promoter and the more it looks like something built over twenty a rigged sport, buried money, and a conviction nobody was ever supposed to question again. Every person who tries to help him ends up hurt, missing, or scared into silence.
Joe has spent his whole life working other people's corners. This is the first fight he can't walk away from between rounds, and the first one where losing doesn't just cost a client his freedom. It costs Joe everything he has left.
For fans of The Lincoln Lawyer and Presumed Innocent, a twisty legal thriller with a fighter's heart.
Audible Audio
Published September 19, 2026
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