Burke's newest client is a woman named Flood, who has the face of an angel, the body of a high-priced stripper, and the skills of a professional executioner. She wants Burke to find a monster for her—so she can kill him with her bare hands.

In this cauterizing thriller, Andrew Vachss' urban mercenary teams up with a lethally gifted avenger to follow a child's murderer through the catacombs of New York, where every alley is blind and the penthouses are as dangerous as the basements. Fearfully knowing, crackling with narrative tension, and written in prose as forceful as a hollow-point slug, Flood is Burke at his deadliest—and Vachss at the peak of his form.

Read an excerpt from Flood.

"Vachss' tough-guy writing style grabs you by the hair and jerks you to attention."

"An extraordinary thriller . . . Vachss never flinches from the horror."

"Burke would eat Spade and Marlowe for breakfast, not even spitting out the bones. [He] is one tough, mean, pray-God-you-don't-meet-him hombre."

"Hard-boiled fiction at its best."

"Today, when people ask me to name some of my literary influences, Vachss is always on the shortlist. He's the author who opened my eyes to the dramatic possibilities of dropping fictional characters into nonfictional settings and circumstances."

Vintage, 1997 (trade paperback)