"Lord of the asphalt jungle." —Washington Post
STREGA
A Burke Novel

In Strega one of our most acclaimed crime writers [Andrew Vachss] gives us a thriller that might have been imagined by Dante. For this is a tour of hell with no stops left out, conducted by a novelist who writes with the authority of the damned. Photo: Martha Kaplan

Mystery | Vintage Crime | Trade Paperback | Jul 2000 | $12.00 | Andrew Vachss BURKE is Back! Andrew Vachss' gripping new thriller—even more dazzling and shocking than his first novel, Flood—returns us to the seamy underworld of New York City in the company of the ex-con/scam artist/private eye whose self-appointed mission is to make the world unsafe for child molesters (and stay out of jail while doing it). This time Burke is on the trail of a photograph—a single snapshot that's out there amidst a sea of kiddie porn, a snapshot that haunts the dreams of a sexually abused six-year-old boy. The search propels Burke into the world he calls home: the secret haunts of mobsters and hustlers, peddlers and prositutes, in the catacombs of lower Manhattan, the dimly lit streets of river-front Brooklyn, and the neon precincts of Times Square. And as he fits together the pieces of this bizarre puzzle, Burke is assisted by his extraordinary crew of friends, who, like Burke himself, walk both sides of the law: Mama Wong—the Chinatown restaurateur (she's somewhere between fifty and ninety years old) who provides both cover and Cntonese delicacies for her "son" Burke. Michelle—the almost-transsexual prostitute, always willing to do Burke just the right kind of favor. Max—the mute Mongolian powerhouse, "the life-taking, widow-making silent wind of death," whose lethal body does all his talking for him, and often for Burke. Prof—short for Prophet, whose street smarts are as highly developed as his rhyme scheme ("I never fall because I see it all") is simple. Immaculata—the Vietnamese psychotherapist whose first concern is her young clients at the clinic for sexually abused children, and who can be as spiky as her heels and dark-lacquered talons suggest. Mole—"not the kind of human you'd want to make eye contact with," avowed Nazi hunter and jack-of-all-questionable-trades, whose home-away-from-prison is a South Bronx junkyard. Pansy—Burke's deadly Neapolitan mastiff: 140 pounds of muscle and dumb as a brick, but always ready to "discuss" the ethics of breaking and entering with anyone who might show up at Burke's warehouse office. And monitoring Burke's progress at a distance, the mysterious, dangerously alluring Strega—redheaded Mafia princess whose twisted heart burns with cold fire...who has forced Burke into taking on this case...who repeatedly forces herself on him, determined to make him her sexual slave...and who begins to betray the secrets of her own past as the novel moves toward its violent and astonishing climax...

Acclaim for Andrew Vachss

ISBN 0-394-55937-1 | 1987 Knopf hard cover edition

ISBN 0-451-15179-8 | 1988 Signet edition

ISBN 0-679-76409-7 | 1995 Vintage Crime edition

Andrew Vachss' implacable private eye has a new client. Strega. She wants Burke to find an obscene photograph—and that search will take him into the ocean that flows just beneath the city, an ocean whose currents are the flesh and money, the anguish of children and the pleasure of twisted adults. It is a place that Burke can visit only at the risk of his sanity and his life. But between the power of Strega and his own sense of justice, there is no turning back. Excerpt "I took a close look at her. I might have to describe her someday and I didn't think she'd pose for a picture. The red hair framed a small, heart-shaped face. Her eyes were big and set far apart, the color of factory smoke. Her makeup looked like it was done by an expert: dark-red lipstick outlined in black, eye-shadow that went from blue to black as it flowed from her eyebrows to the lashes, blended blusher on her cheeks, breaking right at the cheekbones for emphasis. Her teeth were tiny pearls—they looked too small for a grown woman, and too perfect to be real. Her nose was small and sharply bridged, slightly turned up at the tip. Her hands were small, but the fingers were long, capped with long manicured nails in the same shade as her lipstick. Her eyes followed mine as they traveled over her—she was used to this." Strega. The Italian term for sexual witch. She would do anything to have Burke take her case. Anything.

"Vachss' writing is like a dark rollercoaster ride of love and hate." —New Orleans Times-Picayune

Read Laurence Shames interview with Andrew Vachss
for the February 1986 edition of Playboy.