The Grifters
 Roy Dillon is a 25-year-old con artist living in Los Angeles. At the start of the novel, he gets hit in the stomach with a baseball bat when a simple con goes wrong. He seems to be well but when Lilly - his mother - visits him for the first time in almost eight years, he starts to deteriorate. She calls for a doctor, who informs her that he is internally hemorrhaging. Roy is taken to hospital, where he begins to recover after several days. While at the hospital, his mother meets Moira Langtry, the woman that Roy is currently involved with. They take an instant dislike to each other. Lilly hires a nurse, Carol Roberg, in the hope that Roy will give up Moira for Carol. Roy then leaves the hospital and stays at Lilly's apartment where Carol looks after him. When they are about to have an affair, Roy discovers that Carol was in a concentration camp when she was younger. In the meantime Lilly is at the race track working for an organization headed by gangster Bobo Justus. He comes to meet her and he takes her back to his apartment. He proceeds to beat her for a serious mistake she made several months back. In the process, the back of her hand is burned badly. She goes back to her apartment where she has a fight with Roy, and tells him to give up grifting. Roy goes back to work for the day and meets his new boss Perk Kraggs who takes a liking to him. He offers him a job as a sales manager. Roy is unsure if he should take it or not. He goes away with Moira to La Jolla for the weekend. She realizes that he is a con man when she sees him conning a group of people on the train. She tells him that they should work together but he refuses. She gets into a fury and he slaps her. He leaves, thinking that it is the end of the relationship. He later decides to take the sales job and to quit grifting. He is then contacted by the police and he is informed that his mother has committed suicide. He presumes that Moira killed her. However, when he goes out to see the body, he notices that the burn on her hand is not there. He realizes that the body is Moira's and that his mother is still alive. In the meantime, his mother has broken into his apartment and is stealing all his money. He comes back and catches her in the act, and tells her that he won't let her take it for her own good; he wants her to quit grifting as well. In desperation, Lilly attempts to seduce Roy, who recoils in disgust. When he is taking a drink, she hits him with her purse. Unintentionally, she breaks the glass which cuts his neck, causing him to bleed to death. She briefly breaks down after realizing she has killed her own son, but regains her composure and takes the money.