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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 truth: not only about a girl named Beryl, but also about
himself.
This is classic Burke: dark, dangerous,
and galvanizing, from the opening scene to the explosive climax.
Andrew Vachss is the author of many
novels and of two short story collections. He has written
for Parade, Antaeus, Esquire, Playboy,
and The New York Times, among other publications. He
divides his time between New York City and the Pacific Northwest.
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