The Getaway Man
by Andrew Vachss | 
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
by George V. Higgins | 
The Burnt Orange Heresy
by Charles Willeford | 
The Shark-Infested Custard
by Charles Willeford | 
Freaky Deaky
by Elmore Leonard | 
The Switch
by Elmore Leonard | 
The Big Bounce
by Elmore Leonard | 
The Grifters
by Jim Thompson | 
King Suckerman
by George Pelecanos | 
The Cold Six Thousand
by James Ellroy | 
A Hell of a Woman
by Jim Thompson | 
Touch
by Elmore Leonard | 
Shoedog
by George Pelecanos | 
The Hunted
by Elmore Leonard | 
Swag
by Elmore Leonard | 
The Blunderer
by Patricia Highsmith | 
Everybody Pays
by Andrew Vachss | 
A Narrow Return
by Faith Martin | 
Scarred for Life
by Kerry Wilkinson | 
Two-Faced
by Mandasue Heller |
From the author of the acclaimed Burke private-eye series comes an ambitious and chilling novel that shows us not only what evil is, but where it comes from. For Shella is nothing less than a tour of evil's spawning ground, conducted by one of its natural predators. He is called "Ghost" because he is so nondescript as to be invisible and because he slays with such reflexive ease that he might be one of the dead. Once he traveled with a woman who was called "Shella" -- because those who had treated her as a horrendously ill-used child had tried to make her come out of her shell. Now Shella has vanished in a wilderness of strip clubs and peep shows, and Ghost is looking for her, guided by a killer's instinct and the recognition that can only exist between two people who have been damaged past the point of no return. The result is Andrew Vachss's most compelling work to date, the thriller reimagined as a bleak romance of the damned. From the Trade Paperback edition.