Only Child

Zusatztext "The hardest of the hard-boiled private eyes is back... [ Only Child is] full of surprises." – New York Post “Vachss prose is never less than hypnotic.... He's a master at shedding light on grime and human and urban decay.".” – Wilmington News Journal “ Only Child is reliable Vachss! another page-ripping underground procedural with harsh relevance and prose that qualifies the real-life children’s lawyer for his own adjective. (Vachssatious?).” – The Seattle Times “The plot is perfect! the investigation is compelling! and the payoff is bittersweet but satisfying.” – The Jacksonville Sun “Vachss’ style is personal! laconic! shaded and of course! creepy. If you like hard-boiled punk narrative! this is the read for you.” – Los Angeles Times Book Review Informationen zum Autor Andrew Vachss Klappentext It's been years since Burke has been home, years since he's seen his "family” and worked in the underbelly of New York City. Although his appearance has changed, his reputation grown dusty and his wallet thin, his skills and his crew remain razor sharp. So when he is contacted by a mob boss to investigate the murder of his illegitimate daughter, Vonni, Burke takes the job and begins searching for an unspeakably brutal killer. Posing as a casting director looking for tomorrow's stars, Burke reaches out to the high school students who knew Vonni, and may know the identity of the killer. Before long he unearths a perverse enterprise—a young director pursuing a brutal new type of cinema verité. Leseprobe I'd been gone for years. Dead and gone, the whisper-stream said. But that stream always carries more than one current. Just past midnight, I slipped back over the border, moving downwind out of the darkness. Because Hollywood's got one part right--the dirty, scheming, heartless bitch never does sleep. Especially now. The alley behind Mama's restaurant was as immune to time as the chamber of a pharaoh's vault. A pair of dull-orange oil drums stood sentinel. I nosed the Subaru's dechromed black snout carefully into the opening between them, over to an empty patch of oil-stained asphalt. On the filthy wall above it, a square of pure-white paint. Inside the square, Chinese characters, in perfect, fluted-edge calligraphy. It was signed with the chop of Max the Silent, the Chinatown equivalent of a skull-and-crossbones on an unmarked bottle. I slid the Subaru against the wall, not bothering to lock it. Directly across from my spot was a rust-colored steel door with no handle. I slapped my hand against it three times, hard, and stepped back, slitting my eyes against what I knew was coming. The door opened outwards. A sudden spray of grimy yellow kilowatts framed me in place. A man's shape, backlit, blocked my way. I slowly moved my hands away from my sides, keeping them down. The man said something in Cantonese. I didn't move, letting him study me. The door closed in my face. I heard them moving in behind me, but I didn't change position. Felt their hands going over me. Didn't react. The door opened again; no lights, this time. As I stepped inside, I saw a man in a white restaurant apron standing to my left. He had a meat cleaver in his right hand, his left hand locked over the wrist. On the other side of the kitchen, two more men. One of them sighted down the barrel of a pistol, as if I were a piece of land he was surveying. The other flexed his hands to show me he wouldn't need anything else. I heard the door shut behind me. The men watching me were professionals, about as nervous as a yoga class on Xanax. More waiting. Not a problem for me; it's what I do best. "You come home?" I heard her voice before I saw her. "Yeah, Mama." "Good!" she snapped, stepping out of the darkness. "You eat now, okay?" ...

Report

"The hardest of the hard-boiled private eyes is back... [Only Child is] full of surprises." New York Post

Vachss prose is never less than hypnotic.... He's a master at shedding light on grime and human and urban decay.". Wilmington News Journal

Only Child is reliable Vachss, another page-ripping underground procedural with harsh relevance and prose that qualifies the real-life children s lawyer for his own adjective. (Vachssatious?). The Seattle Times

The plot is perfect, the investigation is compelling, and the payoff is bittersweet but satisfying. The Jacksonville Sun

Vachss style is personal, laconic, shaded and of course, creepy. If you like hard-boiled punk narrative, this is the read for you. Los Angeles Times Book Review

Product details

• Authors: Andrew Vachss, Andrew H. Vachss
• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.01.2003
• EAN: 9781400030989
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-3098-9
• No. of pages: 304
• Dimensions: 134 mm x 204 mm x 19 mm
• Weight: 232 g
• Series: Vintage; Vintage crime/Black Lizard; Burke Novels (Paperback); Burke Series; Vintage crime/Black Lizard; Burke Series; Burke
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense