Andrew H. Vachss

When the shining star of the girls' softball team shoots and kills the most popular boy in school, Dolly, friend to the local teenage girls, asks her husband Dell to uncover the true motive behind the inexplicable crime.

Burke is given a purseful of dirty money to find the infamous Ghost Van that is cutting a lethal swath among the teenage prostitutes in the 'hood. He also gets help in the form of a stripper named Belle, whose moves on the runway are outclassed only by what she can do in a getaway car. But not even Burke is prepared for the evil that is behind the Ghost Van or for the sheer menace of its guardian, a cadaverous karate expert who enjoys killing so much...

"Just before daybreak, a body washes up on a pristine beach. The dead man's skull has been bashed open, and his upper body is covered in neo-Nazi tattoos. An anonymous photographer e-mails an image of the scene to the local news, spurring the police to instantaneous response. Searching for suspects at one of the town's "homeless-by-choice" encampments, the cops pick up Homer, a "walking wounded" schizophrenic, who has been showing off a wristwatch...

Trapped between his integrity and selling out, Sugar does the only thing he knows: He takes the weight for a crime he didn't commit--while protecting those who worked with him on a successful jewelry heist. But when he gets out, the mastermind behind the robbery, Sully, leans on him for a favor. Sully asks Sugar to go to Florida on a job. He suspects that there's more to this job than what Sully is telling him. But nothing he suspects or imagines...

Late one night, Michael--an addicted gambler who has lost everything, including himself--spots a woman in a white Rolls-Royce throwing something into the river. Convinced that the woman is a perfect blackmail target, he attempts to recruit a band of homeless outcasts to search for her. But news that a building is slated for demolition turns this halfhearted effort into a serious mission to find the ultimate problem-solver: money, and with it a new...