Andrew Vachss: Flood (USA 1998)

From the Publisher:
"Vachss's tough guy writing style grabs you by the hair and jerks you to atfention." -- Detroit Free Press
Burke's newest 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 profes. sional executioner. She wants Burke to find a monster for her-so she can kill him with her bare hands.

In this cauterizing thriller, Andrew Vachss's renegade private eye teams up with a lethally gifted avenger to follow a child's murderer through the catacombs of New York, where every alley is blind and the penthouses are as dangerous as the basements. Fearfully knowing, crackling with narrative tension, and written in prose as forceful as a hollow-point slug, Flood is Burke at his deadliest -- and Vachss at the peak of his form.

"An extraordinary thriller.... Vachss never flinches from the horror." -- Washington Post Book World
"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

Andrew Vachss: Flood. Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, ISBN: 0679781293 (March, 1998), 339 p., $13.00.

Andrew H. Vachss: Flood (USA 1986)

From the Publisher:
Back cover:
"A WHITE-KNUCKLE READ, A REDEYE FLIGHT TO HELL... ." -- Roderick Thorp, author of The Detective
She came into Burke's office on a steamy city morning, a small blond angel bent on revenge. Her name is Flood, and she wants Burke to find a child murderer called The Cobra -- so she can kill him with her bare hands. In New York's underworld of drugs, hustlers and kiddie porn, Burke's dragnet closes in. The hunt is on -- for a psycho the police can't get, for one last chance to even the score.

"A taut thriller that seethes with gut-wrenching realism." -- William J. Caunitz, author of One Police Plaza
"A fast-paced private-eye novel.... the wild plotting never lets down for a second." -- People
"Chandleresque, laced with authentic details...Vachss never flinches from the horror... AN EXTRAORDINARY THRILLER." -- Washington Post

Inside:
Burke -- he belongs to the city. He dares to prowl the meanest streets in the lawless urban underground He's a freelance private investigator -- but his real specialty is survival. Flood -- She's a hard-knocks lady, who grew up rough. A master in the martial arts, she loves and kills with equal skill. They'll surprise you, thrill you, move you and burn in your minds forever.

Andrew H. Vachss: Flood. A detective, a woman, a manhunt through hell. A Novel. Pocket Books, ISBN: 0671619055 (July, 1986), 343 p., $4.50.

Andrew H. Vachss: Flood (USA 1985)

From the Publisher:
"Flood is going to evoke comparisons with Hammett and Chandler, and it deserves to. But it has a humor and humanity all its own -- the title character is a woman who loves and kills with equal skill -- and its lower-depths big-city ambience is as authentic as the lawyer/author who makes it his own." -- Nick Pileggi, author of Blye, Private Eye and Wiseguy

Here is a shattering new novel, introducing a brand-new exciting talent. The milieu is the urban underside where sex at its gaudiest and most perverse is bought and sold -- a kind of American analogue to Gorky's Lower Depths. Freelance investigator Burke (his true specialty is survival) likes his creator knows this world intimately. And now he must go further and deeper into it than ever before to help a remarkable woman named Flood find and take vengeance on the man who raped and murdered her best friend's child.

Flood is a novel that, even as it shocks, manages a counterpoint of charm and profound sense of decent outrage. And it introduces two wonderful, irrepressible characters of whom more will be heard.

ANDREW H. VACHSS is an acknowledged expert on juvenile delinquency and child abuse. Before becoming an attorney specializing in the problems of abused children, he had worked variously as a probation officer, fruit picker, furniture mover, cab driver, credit collection agent, gambler, advertising copywriter and photographer. He makes his home in New York City. Flood is his first novel. He is completing his second.

Andrew H. Vachss: Flood. A Novel. Donald I. Fine, ISBN: 0917657438 (August, 1985), 341 p., $17.95.