Andrew Vachss has reinvented detective fiction for an age group where guilty secrets are obsolete and murder isn’t even worth a news headline. And in the individual of his haunted, hell-ridden private attention Burke, Vachss offers given us a new kind of hero: a guy inured to every evil except the kind that preys on kids. Now Burke is back, looking into an epidemic of apparent suicides among the teenagers of a wealthy Connecticut suburb. There he discovers a sinister connection between the anguish of the youthful and the actions of an elite sadomasochistic underground, for whom pain and its associated rituals include satisfaction and power. “[Vachss’s] brief sharp sentences crackle with energy; his plots are satisfyingly intricate; the narratives are amazingly paced, and the people . are constantly pungently person.” – Chicago Sun-Times “The personas and events are as sharply thought as if they were etched in metal. The prose is usually short and choppy, just like the ticking of a period bomb going to explode.” – Seattle Post-Intelligencer