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.

In Burke, Andrew Vachss gave readers of crime fiction a hero they could believe in, an avenger whose sense of justice was forged behind bars and tempered on New York’s meanest streets. In this blistering thriller, Burke is drawn into his ugliest case yet, one that involves an underground network of abused women and the sleekly ingenious stalkers who’ve marked them as their personal victims. Burke’s client is Crystal Beth, a beautiful outlaw with a tattoo on her face and a mission burned into her heart. She’s trying to shield one of her charges from a vengeful ex with fetishes for Nazism and torture.

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

For years Burke has harbored an outlaw's hard love for Wolfe, the beautiful, driven former sex-crimes prosecutor who was fired for refusing to "go along to get along." So when Wolfe is arrested for the attempted murder of John Anson Wychek, a vicious rapist she once prosecuted, Burke deals himself in. That means putting together a distrustful alliance between his underground "family of choice," Wolfe's private network, and a rogue NYPD detective who has his own stake in the outcome. Burke knows that Wolfe’s alleged "victim," although convicted only once, is actually a serial rapist.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The acclaimed and ground breaking collection of short stories, poetry, and allegory by Andrew Vachss, one of the most powerful voices in the field of child protection. This work is an illumination of the realities of child abuse, juvenile violence...and tribute to the power of imagination. People Magazine says, "Another Chance is Dr. Seuss dressed up as a Scorsese movie, another on-target hit by an author who has made children his primary concern."

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.

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?

They meet in a no-name diner. A shadowy man hands Burke a CD dossier of someone he wants found. Minutes later, as Burke watches from an alley, his client is gunned down by a professional hunter-killer team. Burke slips away, unsure if he's been spotted.

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.

Sugar is that rarest of commodities: an old-school professional thief, tough and loyal as a pit bull, packing 255 pounds of muscle. When he’s picked out of a photo array in a vicious rape case, the cops find his apartment empty. A stakeout catches Sugar when he returns... carrying a loaded pistol.

Electrifying, compelling, and ultimately terrifying, Two Trains Running is a galvanizing evocation of that moment in our history when the violent forces that would determine America’s future were just beginning to roil below the surface.

Eddie starts stealing cars long before he's old enough to get a license. Driven by a force so compelling that he never questions, just obeys. After a series of false starts, interrupted by stays in juvenile institutions, he connects with two brothers, professional criminals who make Eddie one of their own. But, when their last job goes to hell - alarms blaring, and police sirens closing fast - Eddie stands his ground at the wheel.... In prison Eddie's skills and loyalty come to the attention of J.C., a notorious and respected hijacker.

While doing extended time for killing a fellow prisoner, Wesley meets Carmine Trentoni in a New York state prison. Carmine's life sentence hasn't cut him off from his outside sources, and he sees great potential in Wesley to carry out his revenge. Wesley emerges from prison prepared to be the perfect hit man: calculating, deadly, and driven by money. On his release, Wesley follows Carmine's directions to locate a Mr. Petraglia. Pet and Wesley set up shop in Brooklyn, and execute their assignments with finesse - and occasionally, more explosives than are strictly called for.

A body washes up on a pristine beach. The dead man's skull has been bashed open, and his upper body is covered in neo-Nazi tattoos. The cops pick up Homer, a schizophrenic, who has been showing off a wristwatch he says God gave him. The watch is engraved with a symbol that matches one of the dead man's tattoos. Even though Homer could never have inflicted such damage on a man twice his weight and half his age, he is immediately arrested.

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.