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.
"Burke is the toughest talking first-person narrator since Mike Hammer."
LOS ANGELES TIMES "Vachss... writes hypnotically violent prose."
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
"In the first rank of American crime writers.... Next to Vachss, Chandler, Cain and Hammett look like choirboys."
CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
