Blue Belle

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.