Showing results by author "Andrew Vachss" in All Categories

From the author of the acclaimed Burke private-eye series comes an ambitious and chilling novel that shows us not only what evil is, but where it comes from. For Shella is nothing less than a tour of evil’s spawning ground, conducted by one of its natural predators.He is called “Ghost” because he is so nondescript as to be invisible and because he slays with such reflexive ease that he might be one of the dead.

Investigating an epidemic of apparent suicides among the teenagers of a wealthy suburb, Burke discovers a sinister connection between the anguish of the young and the activities of an elite sadomasochistic underground.

When his girlfriend, Crystal Beth, is gunned down at a gay rights rally in Central Park, Burke, the underground man-for-hire and expert hunter of predators, vows vengeance. But someone beats him to the task: a shadowy killer who calls himself Homo Erectus and who seems determined to wipe gay bashers from the face of the earth. As the killer’s body count rises, most citizens are horrified, but a few see him as a hero, and they hire Burke to track him down... and help him escape.

In Andrew Vachss’s tautly engrossing novel, Burke is given a purse full of dirty money to find the infamous Ghost Van that is cutting a lethal swath among the teenage prostitutes in the hood. He also gets help in the form of a stripper named Belle, whose moves on the runway are outclassed only by what she can do in a getaway car.

In the figure of Burke, Andrew Vachss has given contemporary crime fiction one of its most mesmerizing characters. An abused child raised in orphanages, foster homes, and prisons, Burke is a career criminal and outlaw who steals and scams for a living. But he draws the line at the psychopaths and predators who stalk children. Sometimes he draws that line in blood.

n this mercilessly compelling thriller, Burke - the private eye, sting artist, and occasional hit man who metes out a cruelly ingenious vengeance on those who victimize children - is up against a soft-spoken messiah who may be rescuing runaways or recruiting them for his own hideous purposes. But in doing so Burke becomes a target for an entire Mafia family, a whore with a heart of cyanide, and a contract killer as implacable as a heart-seeking missile.

In Footsteps of the Hawk Burke himself is in danger of becoming a victim. Two rogue cops are stalking him. The coolly seductive Belinda Roberts wants him to free a man charged with a grisly string of rape-murders. The brutal and half-crazy Detective Jorge Morales may be trying to frame Burke for the same crimes.

What — or who — could turn a gifted little boy into a murderous thing that calls itself "Satan’s Child"? In search of an answer, a man named Burke travels from a festering welfare hotel to a neat frame house where a voodoo priestess presides over a congregation of assassins. For this vigilante and unlicensed private eye has made it his business to defend the small victims whom the law has failed — even a child who has been made into a killer.

Burke's newest client is a woman named Flood, who has the face of an angel, the body of a high-priced stripper, and the skills of a professional executioner. She wants Burke to find a monster for her - so she can kill him with her bare hands. In this thriller, Andrew Vachss's renegade private eye teams up with a lethally gifted avenger to follow a child's murderer through the catacombs of New York, where every alley is blind and the penthouses are as dangerous as the basements.

Andrew Vachss’s implacable private eye has a new client, Strega. She wants Burke to find an obscene photograph and that search will take him into the ocean that flows just beneath the city, an ocean whose currents are flesh and money, the anguish of children and the pleasure of twisted adults. It is a place that Burke can visit only at the risk of his sanity and his life. But between the power of Strega and his own sense of justice, there is no turning back.

In Strega one of our most acclaimed crime writers gives us a thriller that might have been imagined by Dante. For this is a tour of hell with no stops left out, conducted by a novelist who writes with the authority of the damned.

“It’s wonderful. The words leap off the page. The plot is fresh. The principal character is original. The style is as clean as a haiku.” — The Washington Post Book World

With the Prof clinging to life in an underground hospital facility, a man named Pryce shows up to make Burke an offer: professional care for the Prof and a clean slate for everyone in his family in return for Burke's services. Even though Pryce is a merciless man, never to be completely trusted, Burke knows he has only one choice, so he takes the job.

Booklist called them "two of the unlikeliest but most likable amateur detectives in crime fiction." The Chicago Tribune describes them as "colorful... lunatic... like a twister.". They're Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, and if you've been reading Joe R. Lansdale's Hap & Leonard novels like Mucho Mojo, The Two-Bear Mambo, and Rumble Tumble, then this is the treat you've been waiting for.

Career criminal Burke’s skill at working the feathery edges of the law are legendary, and this isn’t the first time he’s been hired to trade cash for an abducted kid. But when the meet turns out to be an ambush, Burke’s partner is killed and he’s left for dead. Dumped on the steps of the ER, Burke hovers between life and death. While the police - and whoever wants him dead - are circling closer, biding their time.

It’s been years since Burke has been home, years since he’s seen his “family” and worked in the underbelly of New York City. Although his appearance has changed, his reputation grown dusty, and his wallet thin, his skills and his crew remain razor sharp. So when he is contacted by a mob boss to investigate the murder of his illegitimate daughter, Vonni, Burke takes the job and begins searching for an unspeakably vicious killer.

Burke is back, but still lurking in the shadows, unable to return home. He is prowling the unfamiliar streets of Portland, Oregon, in search of a runaway teen. By all accounts, Rosebud Carlin is a happy, well-adjusted girl. She doesn’t fit the profile of the runaway kids Burke knows so well... and once was. But there’s something about her father....

Burke, ex-con, mercenary, and rumored hit man, makes his living by preying on New York’s most vicious predators and occasionally avenging their innocent victims. But in Andrew Vachss’s mercilessly suspenseful new novel, Burke finds himself working the other side of the street, where guilt and innocence are as disposable as the sheets in a Times Square hotel . . . and as dirty. Burke’s new employer is Kite, a fanatical crusader who specializes in debunking “false allegations” of child sexual abuse.

Undercurrents rise to the surface as Dell employs his mercenary soldier skills to follow the trail of a man who unwisely threatened his beloved wife, Dolly. This is a man with the deadly patience of a gila monster and a complex agenda: possibly the first partner in literature who tries to pass as a gay man, as a light-skinned person of color would have passed for white decades ago.

Andrew Vachss is a lawyer who represents children and youths exclusively. His many books include the Burke series and two collections of short stories, and his work has appeared in Parade, Antaeus, Esquire, Playboy, and The New York Times, among other publications. A native New Yorker, he divides his time between the city of his birth and the Pacific Northwest.

When the former shot-caller of the country's most feared white supremacist prison gang contacts Burke, he comes with references...and the promise of a huge score. Terminally ill, the ex-con needs major cash to gamble on the long-shot possibility of a cure that's available only in Switzerland.

The man known only as Cross and his multi-skilled team of urban mercenaries are back, this time invading one of Chicago's least desirable neighborhoods in a land-grab that has the entire underworld puzzled. Chicago has no shortage of deadly gangs. They all know the Cross Crew occupies a cinderblock bunker called Red 71. The Crew is notorious for its deadly efficiency and its disinterest in anything but money. So why has it turned from seller to buyer, grabbing up houses on a block where only a few holdouts against urban decay remain?