The Cut

About the Book

The Cut deals with conflicts of interest, both legal and moral, and a man’s efforts to live by his principles while learning to live with his past.

Mike Garner does not fit the typical image of an former Navy SEAL. He is an respected 43 year-old lawyer and Town Council member in a small town in the “Low Country” of marshlands and dark rivers surrounding Charleston, South Carolina. His workaholic habits have caused a painful separation from his wife and their teenage son and a resulting tenuous relationship that he is struggling to preserve.

A young woman lawyer in Garner’s law firm discovers that a proposal to sell part of Town-owned parklands for a badly-needed new school will result in their windfall acquisition by one of Garner’s clients, an aggressive and well-connected real estate developer. It will also have devastating legal consequences for the Town, but Garner’s obligations to his client make it unethical for him to reveal those consequences to Town officials, the public or his family. The impending Town Council vote provides the opportunity for an opportunistic member of the Council to further his political career. Garner’s struggles to resolve the legal, governmental and personal conflicts of interest he faces threaten not only his reputation but also the fragile relationship he has tried to maintain with his son and estranged wife.

Meanwhile, Garner must deal with the challenges his teenage son encounters as a result of his mediocrity as a baseball player and his parents’ separation. Garner’s effort to balance his sense of family responsibility also clashes with his desire to pursue an evolving relationship with the attractive woman attorney whose startling discovery triggered the chain of events in which Garner unwillingly finds himself involved.

The situation becomes dangerously complex when he is contacted by an elderly spinster who was the long-time secretary of his client’s grandfather. She reveals to Garner a previously-unknown document that threatens his client’s claim to the parkland. Shortly after Garner discloses the startling information to his client, the old woman is brutally killed, fueling Garner’s growing suspicions regarding his client. Garner then receives another astonishing document written by the woman before her death that makes Garner the only remaining barrier to his client’s acquisition of the valuable land.

When Garner’s son and estranged wife are kidnapped and held as ransom for the document Garner possesses, he must confront a repressed part of his violent past as a SEAL while using his old skills to try to save them. The resulting harrowing and violent events make Garner even more convinced that his client is responsible for the old woman’s death and the kidnapping of his family. The problem is that he can’t prove it.

In a surprise-filled finale, Garner ingeniously combines his legal ability and personal courage to craft a delightfully creative way to get even, and a little more.

The Cut explores why a man’s past has much to do with how he lives his future--and, sometimes, whether he gets to live it at all.

The Cut combines fascinating characters, believable action, thought-provoking explorations of personal relationships and mental and physical struggles, and a final startling legal twist. It is a novel that will appeal to a wide variety.