Andrew Vachss

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Andrew Henry Vachss (born 19 October 1942) is an American crime fiction author, child protection consultant, and attorney exclusively representing children and youths. He is also a founder and national advisory board member of PROTECT: The National Association to Protect Children.

Prior to becoming a lawyer, Andrew Vachss was a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a social-services caseworker, and a labor organizer; and he had directed a maximum-security prison for juvenile offenders. As an attorney, he now represents children and youths in cases of abuse and neglect, delinquency, custody, and related litigation. He is the author of numerous novels, including the Burke series, as well as two collections of short stories, essays, poetry, song lyrics, and graphic novels. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and his work has appeared in Parade, Antaeus, Playboy, Esquire, and the New York Times, among other publications. Vachss' literary awards include the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, 1988, for Strega [as “La Sorciere de Brooklyn”, (Albin Michel)]; the Falcon Award, 1988, Maltese Falcon Society of Japan, for Strega (Hayakawa), the Deutschen Krimi Preis, Die Jury des Bochumer Krimi Archivs, 1989, for Flood [as "Kata," (Ullstein)], and the Raymond Chandler Award (per Giurìa a Noir in Festival, Courmayeur, Italy), 2000, for body of work. A native New Yorker, he now divides his time between the city of his birth and the Pacific Northwest.

Many Vachss novels feature the shadowy private investigator Burke, a true New Yorker, full of energy and contradictions. About his character, Vachss says: "If you look at Burke closely, you'll see the prototypical abused child: hypervigilant, distrustful. He's so committed to his family of choice — not his DNA, biological family, which tortured him, or the state which raised him — but the family that he chose, that homicide is a natural consequence of injuring any of that family. He's not a hit man. But he shares the same religion I do, which is revenge." Vachss refers to people like Burke as the "Children of the Secret". In the Burke novels, they form a cohesive community, bound by mutual empathy and loyalty and not by law.

His wife, Alice Vachss, is a former prosecutor and the author of the nonfiction book Sex Crimes: Ten Years on the Front Lines Prosecuting Rapists and Confronting Their Collaborators.

1 The Burke series
2 Other novels
3 Short story collections
4 Graphic novels and series
5 Plays
6 Non-fiction
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] The Burke series

[edit] Other novels

A Bomb Built in Hell (1973, published in 2000)
Shella (1993)
Batman: The Ultimate Evil (1995)
The Getaway Man (2003)
Two Trains Running (2005)

[edit] Short story collections

Born Bad (1994)
Everybody Pays (1999)
Proving It (2001) audiobook collection

[edit] Graphic novels and series

Hard Looks (1992-93) Ten-volume series.
Batman: The Ultimate Evil (1995)
Cross (1995) Seven-volume series with Jim Colbert.
Predator: Race War (1995)
Alamaailma (1997) Finnish graphic novel, based on two of the "Underground" short stories from Born Bad.
Hard Looks (1996, 2002) Single-volume trade paperback.
Another Chance To Get It Right: A Children's Book for Adults (1993, 1995) (Reprinted with additional material, 2003.)