This stunning Mafia thriller, now available in paperback for the first time, bears many of the hallmarks of Tosches's celebrated nonfiction: an uncanny familiarity with the darkest chambers of the human heart and a wildly elastic prose style. As Cut Numbers unravels a diabolically elaborate scheme to fix New York State's lottery, it reveals the Mafia that only insiders know - not the powerful, well-oiled crime machine of myth, but the messy day-to-day business of violent crime, pornography, gambling, and extortion.