Aftershock

Andrew Vachss stabs his trademark hard-boiled style into the heart of a quaint little seacoast village . . . one seething with corruption beneath its idyllic facade. After a life in various war zones, Dell and Dolly have settled in this town, fulfilling Dolly's lifelong dream. Though she has given up her Médecins Sans Frontières nursing career and moved smoothly into civilian life, Dell had been a mercenary originally trained by the French Foreign Legion, so they both have to sacrifice their prior identities. Dolly becomes a part-time foster mother to dozens of teenagers, while Dell has no interest in the town or its people. But when the shining star of the girls' softball team shoots and kills the most popular boy in school, Dolly asks Dell to uncover the true motive behind this inexplicable crime. Dell treats the job as he would any other mission--no boundaries. So it doesn't take him long to uncover a horrifying rite of passage demanded of... Burke is one of the most cold-blooded yet strangely honorable heroes in the history of crime fiction, an outlaw who makes his living by preying on the most vicious of New York City’s bottom-feeders, those who thrive on the suffering of children. In Andrew Vachss’s tautly engrossing novel Burke is given a purse full of dirty money to find the infamous Ghost Van that is cutting a lethal swath among the teenage prostitutes in the ‘hood. He also gets help in the form of a stripper named Belle, whose moves on the runway are outclassed only by what she can do in a getaway car. But not even Burke is prepared for the evil that is behind the Ghost Van or for the sheer menace of its guardian, a cadaverous karate expert who enjoys killing so much that he has named himself after death.