
Part of Series
They meet in a no–name diner. A shadowy man hands Burke a CD dossier of someone he wants found. Minutes later, as Burke watches from an alley, his client is gunned down by a professional hunter–killer team. Burke slips away, unsure if he’s been spotted. Later, when he examines the dossier, he discovers that the missing woman is Beryl Preston, a girl he’d rescued from a brutal pimp twenty years earlier—when she was only thirteen—and returned to her father. Now he has to find her again—not only because she might be in danger, but also because he has to prove to himself that his rescue mission hadn’t been financed by a predator who wanted his “property” returned. His search will force him to confront a new kind of human ugliness and, finally, to practice the survivalist triage that has marked—and cursed—his life since childhood. In Mask Market, Burke the outlaw investigator finds himself searching for the not only about a girl named Beryl, but also about himself. This is classic dark, dangerous, and galvanizing, from the opening scene to the explosive climax.
Author

Andrew Vachss has been a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a social-services caseworker, a labor organizer, and has directed a maximum-security prison for “aggressive-violent” youth. Now a lawyer in private practice, he represents children and youths exclusively. He is the author of numerous novels, including the Burke series, two collections of short stories, and a wide variety of other material including song lyrics, graphic novels, essays, and a “children’s book for adults.” His books have been translated into twenty languages, and his work has appeared in Parade, Antaeus, Esquire, Playboy, the New York Times, and many other forums. A native New Yorker, he now divides his time between the city of his birth and the Pacific Northwest. The dedicated Web site for Vachss and his work is www.vachss.com. That site and this page are managed by volunteers. To contact Mr. Vachss directly, use the "email us" function of vachss.com.