Andrew Vachss is a lawyer who exclusively represents children and youths, drawing from a past rich with diverse experiences including federal investigation and prison administration. This background deeply informs his literary output, which delves into the darker aspects of human nature and social injustice. Vachss crafts narratives that explore complex ethical dilemmas with an unflinching gaze and a distinctive narrative voice, earning him a global readership captivated by his profound insights.
Set on the streets of New York, this is the fourth crime adventure featuring Burke, who becomes a gun for hire to track down a man who's holding under-age kids to ransom. This novel follows "Flood", "Strega" and "Blue Belle".
Burke is one of the most cold-blooded yet strangely honorable heroes in the history of crime fiction, an outlaw who makes his living by preying on the most vicious of New York City's bottom-feeders, those who thrive on the suffering of children. 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. But not even Burke is prepared for the evil that is behind the Ghost Van or for the sheer menace of its guardian, a cadaverous karate expert who enjoys killing so much that he has named himself after death. A book so ferocious, with characters so venal and actions so breakneck, that you dare not get in the way...