Andrew Vachss: Safe House (UK 2001)

From the Publisher:
Burke -- hard-core criminal and man-for-hire -- is up against a new breed of predator: stalkers. Some obsessed, some deranged, all dangerous. A beautiful outlaw hires Burke to shield one of her charges from a vengeful ex with a fetish for Nazism. But the stalker has a protector who can shut down her operation for good.

When Burke learns that the extortionist might be government-issue, and that the stalker is a member of a neo-Nazi cell with plans to make Oklahoma City look like a pipe-bomb, his survivalist instincts go on full alert. And when it comes down to making his own house and his family-of-choice safe, Burke turns lethal.

Andrew Vachss: Safe House. Canongate, ISBN: 1841951080 (March, 2001), 291 p., £5.99.

Andrew Vachss: Safe House (USA 1999)

From the Publisher:
In Burke, Vachss gave readers of crime fiction a hero they could believe in, an avenger whose sense of justice was forged behind bars and tempered on New York's meanest streets. In this blistering new thriller, Burke is drawn into his ugliest case yet, one that involves an underground network of abused women and the sleekly ingenious stalkers who've marked them as their personal victims.

Burke's client is Crystal Beth, a beautiful outlaw with a tattoo on her face and a mission burned into her heart. She is trying to shield one of her charges from a vengeful ex with fetishes for Nazism and torture. But the stalker has a protector, someone so informed, so ruthless, and so connected that he need only make a few phone calls to shut down Crystal Beth's operation for good -- and Burke along with it. Sinuous in its complexities, brutal in its momentum, Safe House is Burke at the edge of his nerve and cunning. And it's Vachss at the peak of his form.

"Scorching... the prose is accomplished, stylized and flinty; the plot is direct and commanding." -- SEATTLE TIMES
"Vachss's reverence for storytelling is evident in the blunt beauty of his language." -- CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

Andrew Vachss: Safe House. A Burke Novel. Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, ISBN: 0375700749 (March, 1999), 291 p., $12.00.

Andrew Vachss: Safe House (USA 1998)

From the Publisher:
"Safe House comes at you with the speed of a bullet train, a style as spare and stripped down as origami and Andrew Vachss's usual black-as-pitch theme -- the abuse of innocence. Yet for all of their dark modernity, Vachss's novels are inheritors of nineteenth-century social criticism, as much Dickens and Defoe as Hammett and Chandler." -- Martha Grimes

The new novel from Andrew Vachss puts Burke -- hard-core career criminal and man-for-hire-up against a new breed of predator: stalkers. Some obsessed, some deranged, all dangerous.

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.

When Burke learns that the extortionist might be government-issue, and that the stalker he's protecting is a member of a neo-Nazi cell with plans to make Oklahoma City look like a pipe bomb, his survivalist instincts go on full alert "When there's too many loose threads, somebody always weaves them into a noose"). And when it comes down to making his own house and his family-of-choice safe, Burke turns lethal.

With blistering power, Safe House reminds us why Kirkus has called Burke "one of the most fascinating male characters in crime fiction."

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.

Further information about Andrew Vachss and his work is available on his Web site, "The Zero," at www.vachss.com.

"Outside the herd of self-serving, naval-magnifying American novelists, one man walks tall and almost alone: Andrew Vachss. You can read him for razor-edged entertainment, or you can read him for help in understanding the monsters who stalk America's streets. Either way, read him he deserves that, and so do you." -- James Grady

The soundtrack CD to Safe House, consisting of many of the blues numbers featured in this book, is available on the Reprise label (a division of Relativity Entertainment).

Andrew Vachss's Strega, Shella, Down to the Zero, Born Bad and Footsteps of the Hawk are available in vintage paperback.

Andrew Vachss: Safe House. A Burke Novel. Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN: 0375400842 (April, 1998), 291 p., $24.00.