Blue Belle

"Burke would eat Spade and Marlowe for breakfast, not even spitting out the bones. [He] is one tough, mean, pray-god-you-don't-meet-him...hombre." -- Boston Herald Burke is one of the most cold-blooded yet strangely honorable heroes in the history of crime fiction, an outlaw who makes his living 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 purseful 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 an 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.... First rate." -- Chicago Tribune From the Trade Paperback edition.Vachss, Andrew is the author of 'Blue Belle' with ISBN 9780394572284 and ISBN 0394572289.