Andrew Vachss: False Allegations (USA 1997)

From the Publisher:
Burke - ex-con, mercenary, sometime killer - makes his living preying on New York's most vicious predators and avenging their innocent victims. But in Andrew Vachss's 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 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.

"Burke is the toughest talking fest-person sarrater siece Mite Hammer." -- Los Angeles Times
"Vachss... writes hypnotically violent prose." -- Chicago Sun-Times

Andrew Vachss: False Allegations. A Burke Novel. Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, ISBN: 0679772936 (October, 1997), 237 p., $12.00.

Andrew Vachss: False Allegations (USA 1996)

From the Publisher:
Burke. Ex-con. Mercenary. Urban survivalist. Carries a criminal. Scavenger. And a member of that vast underground tribe, Children of the Street. And, some whisper, the city's finest hunter of predators. Perhaps because he was spawned from the same seed.

Burke is a man for hire. And Bondi is a private dancer, performing on command for special routine on a high-tech stage. When she learns who's really watching, she wants to buy some revenge. Or so she says. An acrossslipper trail leads to an obsessed enforcer named Heather, and her boss, Kite, who blackmails Burke into taking on an ugly job of redestriction. Kite is a professional debunker, specializing in allegations of child sexual abuse: "false" allegations, he says. Which stunts. But now he may have stumbled across the case of his career-the real thing. And he needs a man who knows Children-Street witches. He finds Burke.

Dark, edgy, unflinching, False Allegations is Andrew Vachss starting from ground zero... and Burke at his most dangerous.

Andrew Vachss has been a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a social caseworker, and a labor organizer, and has directed a maximum-security prison for youthful offenders. Now, as a lawyer in private practice, he represents children and youth exclusively. He is the author of ten novels: a collection of short stories, Heart Transplant, three Burke series -- Cross, Hard Looks, and Underground, and Another Chance to Get It Right, a collection of fiction for adults. His nonfiction work has appeared in Parade, Atticus, The New York Times, and numerous other forums. He lives in New York City.

Andrew Vachss: False Allegations. A Burke Novel. Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN: 0679451099 (November, 1996), 229 p., $23.00.