Safe House: A Burke Novel

Safe House: A Burke Novel by Vachss, Andrew. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780375400841.

The new novel from Andrew Vachss puts Burke hard-core career criminal and man-for-hire up against a new breed of predator: stalkers. Some obsessed, some deranged, all dangerous. Burkes old prison pal Hercules, hired by a shadowy network that runs a safehouse for stalking victims, botched the job, and one of the stalkers is dead. To save his partner, Burke has to penetrate the network, and he makes a deal with the boss, Crystal Beth, a woman as obsessed as the stalkers. But Crystal Beth has a stalker of her own, an extortionist who threatens to bring down her entire network unless she surrenders one of the women shes hiding. When Burke learns that the extortionist might be government-issue, and that the stalker hes protecting is a member of a neo-Nazi cell with plans to make Oklahoma City look like a pipe bomb, his survivalist instincts go on full alert ("When theres too many loose threads, somebody always weaves them into a noose"). And when it comes down to making his own house and his family-of-choice safe, Burke turns lethal. With blistering power, Safe House reminds us why Kirkus has called Burke "one of the most fascinating male characters in crime fiction."