"Vachss is in the first rank of American crime writers."

"[Vachss'] short sharp sentences crackle with energy; his plots are satisfyingly elaborate; the narratives are beautifully paced, and the characters . . . are always pungently individual."

"Staccato prose, a mixed bag of Raymond Chandler style and James Cain sleaze and a voice that's pure Vachss—strident, sharp, a muscular rage raining down on a society in need of cleansing."

Andrew Vachss has reinvented detective fiction for an age in which guilty secrets are obsolete and murder isn't even worth a news headline. And in the person of his haunted, hell-ridden private eye Burke, Vachss has given us a new kind of hero: a man inured to every evil except the kind that preys on children.

Now Burke is back, investigating an epidemic of apparent suicides among the teenagers of a wealthy Connecticut suburb. There he discovers a sinister connection between the anguish of the young and the activities of an elite sadomasochistic underground, for whom pain and its accompanying rituals are a source of pleasure—and power.