Mystery Monday: Andrew Vachss

--by Hanje Richards

Because I am a huge mystery fan, “Mystery Monday” was born. Because I like to read mysteries in order, I'm going to list and talk about them in chronological, rather than alphabetical, order.

If an author has written more than one series (and many authors have), I'll talk about different series in different posts to keep things as clear as possible. For those interested in reading some of the featured titles, I've noted at the end of each book's summary whether it's available at the Copper Queen Library or at another library in Cochise County through Interlibrary Loan (ILL).

Andrew Henry Vachss (born 1942) is an American crime fiction author, child protection consultant, and attorney exclusively representing children and youths. He is also a founder and national advisory board member of PROTECT: The National Association to Protect Children. Vachss' last name rhymes with “tax.” He is a native New Yorker.

Many Vachss novels feature the shadowy, unlicensed investigator Burke, an ex-con, career criminal, and deeply conflicted character. Vachss coined the phrase “Children of the Secret,” which refers to abused children, of whatever age, who were victimized without ever experiencing justice, much less love and protection. In the Burke novels, some of these “Children of the Secret” have banded together as adults into what Vachss calls a “family of choice.” Their connection is not biological, and their bond goes well beyond mere loyalty. Most are career criminals; none allow the law to come before the duty to family.

I have featured Andrew Vachss' Burke series in this blog post. The rest of his titles are stand-alone novels.

The Burke Series

Flood (1985) - In Vachss' acclaimed first novel, we are introduced to Burke, the avenging angel of abused children. Burke's 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 – so she can kill him with her bare hands. In this cauterizing thriller, Vachss' renegade private eye teams up with a lethally gifted vigilante to follow a child's murderer through the catacombs of New York, where every alley is a setup for a mugging and every tenement has something rotten in the basement. (available through ILL)

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Strega (1987) - Vachss' 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. (available through ILL)

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Blue Belle (1988) - Burke is back in his most tightly wound, electrifying thriller to date. In Blue Belle, a savage gang is hunting and killing teenage prostitutes. A murderous martial arts expert is trying to set up a deal with Burke's friend Max. And complicating it all is Belle, a voluptuous exotic dancer who has worked her way into Burke's heart. (available through ILL)

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Hard Candy (1989) – 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 heat-seeking missile. (available through ILL)

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Blossom (1990) - Burke finds himself in a fading Indiana mill town, trying to clear a boy charged with a series of sexually motivated shootings. He's intent on finding the real sniper – and his unlikely ally is a beautiful woman named Blossom, who has her own reasons for finding the murderer, as well as her own idea of vengeance. (available at CQL)

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Sacrifice (1991) – 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. (available through ILL)

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Down in the Zero (1994) - Burke's been doing some general snooping – checking up on cheating spouses, etc. – when he gets a call from Randy, a teenager from a wealthy Connecticut neighborhood whose friends are all committing suicide. He has a feeling his life is in danger – and he remembers that his mother Cherry (who saved Burke's neck long ago when he was a freedom-fighter in Biafra) once told him to contact Burke if he ever felt endangered. Burke moves into Randy's house for an extended investigation of the area – and this leads him to Cherry's friend, Fancy, a potentially dangerous vixen whose trust Burke casually earns through a mixture of sexual role-playing and a very careful search into her past. (available at CQL)

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Footsteps of the Hawk (1995) - 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 finds Burke the pawn in a conspiracy involving two rogue cops and a grisly string of sex crimes. (available through ILL)

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False Allegations (1996) – Burke makes his living preying on New York's most vicious predators and avenging their innocent victims. But in Andrew Vachss' 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 he 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. (available through ILL)

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Safe House (1998) - Burke's old prison pal Hercules, hired by a shadowy network that runs a safehouse for stalking victims, botched the job, and one of the stalkers is dead. To save his partner, Burke has to penetrate the network, and he makes a deal with the boss, Crystal Beth, a woman as obsessed as the stalkers. But Crystal Beth has a stalker of her own, an extortionist who threatens to bring down her entire network unless she surrenders one of the women she's hiding. (available at CQL)

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.Choice of Evil (1999) - 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. (available through ILL)

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Dead and Gone (2001) - Urban Outlaw Burke barely survives an attack by a professional hit squad that kills his partner. With a new face, Burke goes into hiding. And on the hunt. Vachss' novel takes him from the streets of New York City through a cross-country underground and deep into his own tortured past. The violent journey ends in a place that exists only in the dreams of the darkest degenerates on earth. (available at CQL)

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Pain Management (2001) - 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. Burke knows the street script, but the actors are all strangers. Cut off from his family and his network of criminal contacts, Burke is forced into a dangerous alliance with a renegade group dedicated to providing relief to those in intractable pain by any means necessary. (available at CQL).

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Only Child (2002) - 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 brutal killer. Posing as a casting director looking for tomorrow’s stars, Burke reaches out to the high school students who knew Vonni and may know the identity of the killer. Before long he unearths a perverse enterprise – a young director pursuing a brutal new type of cinema verité. (available at CQL)

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Down to Here (2004) - 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. The deeper he presses, the more gaping holes he finds in the prosecution’s case, but shadowy law enforcement agencies seem determined to protect Wychek at all costs, no matter who it sacrifices. Burke ups the ante by re-opening all the old “cold case” rape investigations, calls in a lot of markers from both sides of the law, and finally shows all the players why “down here” is no place for tourists. (available at CQL)