Burke

6 primary works

Down in the Zero

by Andrew Vachss

Published 4 July 1995

   Andrew Vachss has reinvented detective fiction for an age in which guilty secrets are obsolete and murder isn't even worth a news headline. And in the person of his haunted, hell-ridden private eye Burke, Vachss has given us a new kind of hero: a man inured to every evil except the kind that preys on children. 
   Now Burke is back, investigating an epidemic of apparent suicides among teenagers of a wealthy Connecticut suburb.  There he discovers a sinister connection between the anguish of the young and the activities of an elite sadomasochistic underground, for whom pan and its accompanying rituals are a source of pleasure—and power

Footsteps of the Hawk

by Andrew Vachss

Published 29 October 1996

  In Footsteps of the Hawk Burke himself is in danger of becoming a victim.  Two rogue cops are stalking him.  The coolly seductive Belinda Roberts wants him to free a man charged with a grisly string of rape-murders. The brutal and half-crazy Detective Jorge Morales may be trying to frame Burke for the same crimes.  What ensues is a novel of high-wire suspense and nightmarish authenticity informed by an insider's knowledge of the city where everything—from flesh to other people's cellular phone numbers—is up for sale.

Down Here

by Andrew Vachss

Published 12 April 2005

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.

Mask Market

by Andrew Vachss

Published 28 August 2007

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. Later, when he examines the dossier, he discovers that the missing woman is Beryl Preston, a girl he’d rescued from a brutal pimp twenty years earlier—when she was only thirteen—and returned to her father. Now he has to find her again—not only because she might be in danger, but also because he has to prove to himself that his rescue mission hadn’t been financed by a predator who wanted his “property” returned. His search will force him to confront a new kind of human ugliness and, finally, to practice the survivalist triage that has marked—and cursed—his life since childhood. In Mask Market, Burke the outlaw investigator finds himself searching for the truth: not only about a girl named Beryl, but also about himself.

This is classic Burke: dark, dangerous, and galvanizing, from the opening scene to the explosive climax.

Terminal

by Andrew Vachss

Published 2 December 2008

After years of carefully working the edges, a blood-commitment forces Burke's return to his former career: "violence-for-money." Claw, once the shot-caller of a white supremacist prison gang is free . . . and terminally ill--he desperately needs a pile of cash to bet on a long-shot cure. He tells Burke about a punk who once purchased protection from him, a man who claims to know the truth behind a "cold case, " the unsolved rape-murder of a thirteen-year-old girl. The killers are all weathly men today, ideal blackmail marks. But wealth is power, and the informant needs Claw's protection again. Burke decides to roll the dice. A win would give Burke the two things he lives for: Money and Revenge. A loss would turn "terminal" from a diagnosis into a certainly, and not just for Claw.

Another Life

by Andrew Vachss

Published 29 December 2008

In this blistering conclusion to the nationally bestselling series, Burke is forced into a journey that will change the lives of the urban survivalist and his outlaw family forever.The only person Burke has ever called father, known throughout the underground as “The Prof,” is in a coma, barely clinging to life in an off the-books hospital. So when Pryce, a slippery man with government connections, offers the best medical services for the Prof and a clean slate for all concerned, Burke takes the contract without reading it. The two-year-old son of a Saudi prince has been kidnapped. A highly professional snatch; no mistakes, no clues, and no ransom note. Burke’s job: get the kid back, whatever it takes. To do so, the ultimate man-for-hire must return to the day “Baby Boy Burke” was written on his birth certificate, and write, in the blood of his enemies, the final act of this story.