Andrew Vachss: The Weight (USA 2011)

From the Publisher:
"Sugar and rena are a canny, lethal team that bears watching in the hopes they become future players in Vachss's ever-growing arsenal of tarnished, avenging angels." -- LOS ANGELES TIMES

Andrew Vachss returns with a mesmerizing novel about a hard-core thief who's about to embark on a job that will alter his life forever. Sugar's a pure professional, "time tested" and packing 255 pounds of muscle. Accused of a rape he couldn't have done because he was robbing a jewelry store at the time, the DA offers him two options: give up his partners in the heist and walk, or go back to prison alone. For Sugar, there isn't a choice; he takes the weight. When he gets out, his money is there, but so is another job. One of the heist crew has fallen off the radar, and the mastermind behind the jewelry job asks Sugar to find him and make sure their secrets are safe. Sugar suspects that there's more to this gig than what he is being told. But nothing he suspects can prepare him for what he finds.

"Rippling with the whip-smart dialogue we have come to expect from Vachss, this is yet another classic from the master." -- IRISH INDEPENDENT

"The prose is red-hot, mean, stripped down, and sometimes, just plain serious." -- SAN FRANCISCO BOOK REVIEW

Andrew Vachss: The Weight. A Novel. Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, ISBN: 9780307741318 (November, 2011), 263 p., $15.00.

Andrew Vachss: The Weight (USA 2010)

From the Publisher:
Andrew Vachss returns with a mesmerizing novel about a hard-core thief who's about to embark on a job that will alter his life forever.
Sugar is that rarest of commodities: an old-school professional thief, as tough and loyal as a pit bull, packing 255 pounds of muscle. When he's picked out of a photo array in a vicious rape case, the cops find his apartment empty. A stakeout catches Sugar when he returns... carrying a loaded pistol. The sex-crime cops get nothing from their interrogation, but a streetwise detective figures out why Sugar offers no alibi: at the time of the rape, a holiday-weekend break-in job was being pulled at a jewelry store. The DA offers Sugar two options: give up his partners in the jewelry heist and walk, or plead to the rape he didn't commit -- and he'll toss in the gun charge. For Sugar, that's not two options; he takes the weight.

When Sugar finishes his time, his money is waiting for him, held by Solly, the mastermind behind the jewelry heist. But Solly tells Sugar that one of the heist crew was actually sent by another planner -- and that planner has just died. In Sugar's world, all loose threads must be cut. He suspects that there's more to this job than what Solly is telling him. But nothing he suspects or imagines can prepare him for what he finds...

Andrew Vachss: The Weight. A Novel. Pantheon Books, ISBN: 9780307379191 (November, 2010), 263 p., $25.95.