Andrew Vachss: Mask Market (2007)

From the Publisher:
Burke, the relentless urban mercenary, returns in this riveting new thriller by bestselling author Andrew Vachss.

Two decades ago, Burke "recovered" a teenage runaway from a pimp. Now she's on the run, again. After seeing the man who hired him to find her gunned down by a professional hunter-killer team, Burke realizes he could be next. The master urban survivalist knows he has to finish the job to learn the truth, only now he's looking for a predator, not a victim. The search will force Burke to walk down the one dark alley that has always terrified him -- his past.

Andrew Vachss: Mask Market. A Burke Novel. Vintage Books, ISBN: 0307278301 (August, 2007), 352 p., $7.99.

Andrew Vachss: Mask Market (2006)

From the Publisher:
They meet in a no-name diner. A shadowy man hands Burke a CD-dossier of someone he wants found. Minutes later, as Burke watches from an alley, his client is gunned down by a professional hunter-killer team. Burke slips away, unsure if he's been spotted. Later, when he examines the dossier, he discovers that the missing woman is Beryl Preston, a girl he'd rescued from a brutal pimp twenty years earlier - when she was only 13 - and returned to her father. Now he has to find her again - not just because she might be in danger, but because he has to make sure he didn't wrong her the first time. His search will force him to confront a new kind of human ugliness, and, finally, to practice the survivalist triage that has marked - and cursed - his life since childhood. In Mask Market, Burke the outlaw investigator finds himself searching for the truth: not only about a girl named Beryl, but also about himself.

This is classic Burke: dark, dangerous, and galvanizing, from the opening scene to the explosive climax.

Andrew Vachss: Mask Market. A Burke Novel. Pantheon Books, ISBN: 0375424229 (August, 2006), 241 p., $24.95.