Andrew Vachss

In Burke, 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 new 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 is trying to shield one of her charges from a vengeful ex with fetishes for Nazism and torture. But the stalker has a protector, someone so informed, so ruthless, and so connected that he need only make a few phone calls to shut down Crystal Beth's operation for good--and Burke along with it. Sinuous in its complexities, brutal in its momentum, Safe House is Burke at the edge of his nerve and cunning. And it's Vachss at the peak of his form.

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 cauterizing thriller, Andrew Vachss's renegade investigator 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. Fearfully knowing, crackling with narrative tension, and written in prose as forceful as a hollow-point slug, Flood is Burke at his deadliest—and Vachss at the peak of his form.

"In the first rank of American crime writers. . . . Next to Vachss, Chandler, Cain and Hammett look like choirboys." --Cleveland Plain DealerBurke--ex-con, mercenary, sometime killer--makes his living preying on New York's most vicious predators and 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. Kite has a case that may be the real thing, but needs Burke to tell him if it is. And if mere money can't persuade Burke to cooperate, Kite has plenty of other incentives at his disposal--including a fanatical bodyguard with a taste for corsets and brass knuckles. A tour guide to hell written in icy prose, False Allegations is Vachss at his most unnerving." Burke is the toughest talking first-person narrator since Mike Hammer." --Los Angeles Times "Vachss . . . writes hypnotically violent prose." --Chicago Sun-Times

Vachssin maanisella yksityisetsivällä on uusi asiakas, Strega, mutta vanha vimmansa, arsenaalinsa ja napolinmastiffinsa. Burken on etsittävä aristokraattiselle punapäälle eräs rivo valokuva. Tehtävä vie kaupunkikanjoneiden kostonenkelin takaisin saastan valtamerelle, joka velloo kaupungin julkisivun takana - merelle, jossa liha ja raha, lasten hätä ja perverssien aikuisten halut myrskyävät. Sen mainingit ovat viedä Burkelta järjen ja hengen. Strega on tappajakoiran vainulla ja haikun kirkkaudella kirjoitettu kiertoajelu Danten kiirastulien veroiseen kaupunkihelvettiin - oppaana yksityisetsivä, jonka toiminnalla ei ole mitään tekemistä lain kanssa, mutta joka on suurkaupungin viimeinen oikeuden jakaja.

A pulse-quickening new crime novel featuring Burke--scam artist, private investigator, sometime killer--whose sole passion is defending children who fall victim to New York City's darker appetites, Footsteps of the Hawk finds Burke the pawn in a conspiracy involving two rogue cops and a grisly string of sex 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, Burke travels from a festering welfare hotel to a neat frame house where a voodoo priestess presides over a congregation of assassins.

Burke on entinen linnakundi, ammattirikollinen ja kaupunkikanjoneiden kostonenkeli, joka käyttää miekan sijasta napalmia, tappajakoiria ja käsiaseita. Burke metsästää laumansa kanssa betoniviidakon kasvottomia hirviöitä - pedofiilejä. Vachssin urbaanit dekkarit päivittävät rikoskirjallisuuden nykypäivään. Unohda Chandler ja muut partiopojat - astu veren maku suussa pimeyden sudämeen.

Vachss has reinvented detective fiction and, in the person of Burke, his haunted, hell-ridden P. I., has given readers a new kind of hero. 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.

"Kun tapoin ensimmäisen kerran, olin peloissani. En peloissani siitä, mitä olin tekemässä - tapoin koska olin peloissani." Suurkaupungin pimeimmissä ja väkivaltaisimmissa syövereissä kaksi ihmistä kohtaa toisensa. Kuin sokeat koirat he kuulevat saman äänettömän vihellyksen ja muodostavat siteen, jonka vain kuolema voi katkaista. Miehen nimi on John, joskus Aave. Hän on sielultaan viaton ammattitappaja. Shella on entinen strippari. Johnin joutuessa kolmeksi vuodeksi vankilaan heidän kumppaniitensa katkseaa ja Shella katoaa sado-masokistien alamaailmaan. Vapauduttuaan John alkaa vimmaisen odysseian halki Amerikan etsiessään naistaan maailmassa, jossa kukaan ei ole viaton, eikä ketään säästetä.