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Andrew Vachss, an attorney in private practice specializing in juvenile justice and child abuse, is the country's best recognized and most widely sought after spokesperson on crimes against children. He is also a bestselling novelist, whose works include Flood (1985), Strega (1987), Blu Belle (1988), Hard Candy (1989), Blossom (1990), Sacrifice (1991), Shella (1993), Down in the Zero (1994), Footsteps of the Hawk (1995), False Allegations (1996), Safe House (1998), Choice of Evil (1999), and Dead and Gone (2000). His short stories have appeared in Esquire, Playboy, and The Observer, and he is a contributor to ABA Journal, Journal of Psychohistory, New England Law Review, The New York Times, and Parade. His new novel, Pain Management, will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in September 2001.
Vachss has worked as a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a caseworker in New York, and a professional organizer. He was the director for an urban migrants re-entry center in Chicago and another for ex-cons in Boston. After managing a maximum-security prison for violent juvenile offenders, he published his first book, a textbook, about the experience. He was also deeply involved in the relief effort in Biafra, now Nigeria.
For ten years, Vachss' law practice combined criminal defense with child protection, until, with the success of his novels, it segued exclusively into the latter, which is his passion. Vachss calls the child protective movement "a war," and considers his writing as powerful a weapon as his litigation.
Photo (c) Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
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Andrew Vachss’s previous novel, Dead and
Gone, prompted the Rocky Mountain News to
say, “Starting a Vachss novel is like putting
a vial of nitroglycerine into your pocket and going
for a jog.” With his latest thriller, Vachss
turns the heat up a notch by dropping his career
criminal and ultimate urban survivalist, Burke, in
the middle of some of the most dangerously
determined humans he has ever faced.
Burke
has gone “missing-and-presumed” from his
native New York City, following a failed
assassination attempt. The shadowy man-for-hire is
scratching out an existence in the Pacific
Northwest, waiting to see if it is safe to return.
Without his underground network of contacts
and connections, cut off from his own people, Burke
is forced to abandon his trademark complex scams.
Instead, he returns to what he refers to as
“violence for money.” When Gem, the
professional border-crosser who calls herself his
wife, brings him a job tracking down a runaway
teenager, Burke finds himself in a long, dark tunnel
of lies—lined with more games than
players.
Burke takes to the unfamiliar
streets, quickly and brutally establishing a
presence. The whisper-stream carries him to a
fanatical group of criminal Samaritans dedicated to
supplying adequate drugs for those suffering from
chronic pain. Forced into a potentially deadly
alliance, Burke walks the wire between betrayals,
risking it all for a girl he has never met. Because
the State-raised outlaw knows better than most that
there are many kinds of pain. And many ways to
“manage” it.
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