Andrew Vachss: Terminal (USA 2008)

From the Publisher:
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 wealthy 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 certainty, and not just for Claw.

"Burke is the hardest, most twisted man in crime and thriller fiction." -- CONTRA COSTA TIMES
"Transcends the crime novel even further." -- THE SEATTLE TIMES

Andrew Vachss: Terminal. A Burke Novel. Vintage Books, ISBN: 9780307387059 (December, 2008), 256 p., $13.95

Andrew Vachss: Terminal (USA 2007)

From the Publisher:
"You know why we hate you? Not because you don't know what we know, but because, if you did, you wouldn't give a damn.
      So I'm sitting here, waiting to commit extortion, and planning a lot worse. I'm what you'd call a criminal. That's why I'll never be you. And I'm proud of it." -- from Terminal

When the former shot-caller of the country's most feared white supremacist prison gang contacts Burke, he comes with references... and the promise of a huge score. Terminally ill, the ex-con needs major cash to gamble on the long-shot possibility of a cure that's available only in Switzerland. The only card he has to play is a small-time degenerate who paid for protection when they were in prison together. That professional bottom-feeder claims he personally buried the body of a thirteen-year-old girl who had been raped, tortured, and finally killed by three rich men more than thirty years ago--and that he's holding irrefutable proof. But such a complicated extortion scheme needs the hand of a specialist crew, so Burke is offered a piece of the action.

He and his outlaw family put together a lethal plan. If they can pull it off, Burke gets the two things he lives for: Money and Revenge. If not, "terminal" could prove to be more than just one man's diagnosis.

Terminal is a blistering thriller that forces Burke back in time--to keep a blood-commitment to a brother from his prison past, and to avenge the "cold-cased" rape-murder of a teenage girl.

Andrew Vachss: Terminal. A Burke Novel. Pantheon Books, ISBN: 037542508X (September, 2007), 243 p., $24.95