Hard Candy

In this mercilessly compelling thriller Burke - the private eye sting artist and occasional hit man who metes out a cruelly ingenious vengeance on those who victimize children - is up against a soft-spoken messiah who may be rescuing runaways or recruiting them for his own hideous purposes. But in doing so Burke becomes a target for an entire Mafia family a whore with a heart of cyanide and a contract killer as implacable as a heart-seeking missile. Written with Vachss' signature narrative overdrive - and with his unnerving familiarity with the sub-basement of American crime - Hard Candy is vintage Burke.