Showing results by author "Andrew Vachss" in All Categories

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?

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.

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.

A hit man stalks his mark at a race track. A sociopath crosses every moral boundary to become a published author. An ex-mercenary obsessively defends his "perimeter" from a dangerous interloper. A man for hire grudgingly accepts help from a teenage girl to track an online predator. In a dystopian future, young people struggle for survival underground, forming themselves into vicious gangs with only the graffiti of the "last journalists" accepted as truth. Andrew Vachss collects 20 tight, powerful stories - all from the past decade of his career, including some now published for the first time - along with an original screenplay.

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.

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.

Ho was a revered sensei, but when his dismissive arrogance caused the death of a beloved student, he renounced not only his possessions but also his role as master, and now roams the streets in search of a way to atone. Drawn by his presence, a group forms around him.

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.

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.

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.

After pleading guilty to a series of homicides, Esau Till sits on death row, writing his life story. But his memoir is his one last chance to protect his brother. And, when it comes to his baby brother, Esau Till is a man without boundaries. When the genetic cards were dealt, Esau drew a genius IQ - and a crippled body. His brother Tory drew a slow mind - and almost superhuman strength. Very early on, Esau learned that the only way to guarantee his brother's safety was to make himself indispensable, so he became the top hired killer for both rival local mobs.

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.

Cross and his strange but multi-talented crew together form one of the most ruthless and efficient hired guns the world has known. In this first appearance in a novel, they take on an elusive serial killer who no one has ever seen. This savage murderer is leaving a trail of eviscerated bodies all over the world

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.

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.

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.