For the love of a beautiful waitress, a meat salesman will turn butcher in this crime thriller by "one of the greats of American noir" ( The Guardian). Clay Lockwood. is a top distributing executive with Grant's Meats, and the contract with the Portico restaurant chain is only the latest in a long line of boardroom coups. He arrives at the Portico for lunch, and eats his fill of his company's beef, but leaves with an entirely different hunger gnawing at his gut—a volcanic passion that will tear him apart. Lockwood is mesmerized by hostess Sally Alexis, a magician's wife. She rebuffs his first pass, but calls him up later…. Although Sally's marriage is miserable, she won't leave her husband in order to secure an inheritance for her little boy. And as the lovers get closer, Lockwood becomes an amateur illusionist himself, focusing on one very particular deadly trick—how to make a magician disappear. "James M. Cain is one novelist who has something to teach just about any writer, and delight just about any reader." —Anne Rice, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Interview with a Vampire