Showing results by author "Andrew Vachss" in All Categories

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.

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.

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.

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

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."