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Andrew Henry Vachss (October 19, 1942 – December 27, 2021) was a child protection consultant, an attorney who exclusively represented children and teenagers, and an author of crime novels, primarily known for the Burke series.

A small-time criminal raised by the state, Burke started off as a Con Man and unlicensed Private Detective, and as the series continues he graduates to Vigilante Man. He earns a living scamming 'freaks' (generally child abusers, neo-Nazis and wannabe mercenaries), rescuing runaways, taking the occasional case, and committing the occasional act of robbery and blackmail.

Burke is an orphan, but has True Companions who he considers to be his real family, consisting of Max the Silent, The Mole, The Prof and Michelle. Others join as the series continues.

As a lawyer specialising in child abuse cases, Vachss created Burke to express the frustration he felt over society's abandonment and abuse of those for whom it is responsible. He has gone on to write other fiction inspired by this subject, ranging from graphic novels to plays, including tales written in the Batman and Predator universes.

The Burke series ended in 2008. Vachss continued to write crime stories, often straightforward hard-boiled action stories (e.g. the Cross series) sometimes books with a strong social theme (Haiku for homelessness, or Two Trains Running for 1950s race relations). In 1995, he wrote a Batman novel The Ultimate Evil, which sees the Caped Crusader doing battle with child sex traffickers. One of his final novels, Carbon, was a science fiction take on his usual themes.

His wife Alice Vachss is a former sex crimes prosecutor and author of a non-fiction book that details her experiences.

    Summaries of the Burke books: 
  • A Bomb Built in Hell (written in 1973, published in 2012) - A prelude to the Burke series proper, written before but not accepted for publication until well afterwards. This is Wesley's story, the story of how he made his infamy. In jail, he encountered a mob boss and was moulded into an assassin for the mob. Then he learned more about the system that had gotten him there, turned his eye on political targets, and started on the road to a literally explosive ending.
  • Flood (1985) - The first book focuses on Burke hunting down a target for the Action Girl to kill.
  • Strega (1987) - A simple job to handle a creepy voyeur gets Burke involved in hunting a child pornography ring. But The Vamp has plans of her own.
  • Blue Belle (1988) - A depraved gang is kidnapping prostitutes, with their pimps offering a large reward for bringing the culprits down. Burke has eyes on the prize, but another may see him as a prize of her own.
  • Hard Candy (1989) (Not to be confused with the film) - Burke laments the end of the last book, but is thrown back into the world with the return of Wesley, who comes for blood. This was a partial rework of A Bomb Built In Hell, which wasn't published in its entirety for decades.
  • Blossom (1990) - Taking a break from New York, Burke visits Indiana to help out an old cellmate.
  • Sacrifice (1991) - Burke needs help from a Voudoun priestess to stop a killer who created a killer: an abused child with dissociative identity disorder, including a murderous personality called Satan's Child.
  • Down in the Zero (1994) - Burke travels to a wealthy Connecticut suburb to help a teenager.
  • Born Bad (1994) - A short story anthology.
  • Footsteps of the Hawk (1995) - Burke has been the hunter, but now it is time for him to be the hunted when two rogue cops descend on him. One seeks his assistance in clearing the name of a man charged with a string of grisly rape-murders, but may hide an agenda of her own. The other seems bent on pinning the very same crimes on Burke, but why and to what end?
  • False Allegations (1996) - Burke encounters an expert who specializes in debunking false allegations of child abuse, who may have other agendas.
  • Safe House (1998) - Burke protects a woman's shelter from the people who drove the women there.
  • Choice of Evil (1999) - When his girlfriend is gunned down at a gay rights rally, Burke is beaten to vengeance by a mysterious anti-gay basher Vigilante Man, one whose methods are uncomfortably familiar.
  • Everybody Pays (1999) - a short story collection. Not all are Burke stories.
  • Dead and Gone (2000) - A simple ransom-for-captive exchange goes horribly wrong in a way Burke had not expected. In order to track down the shadowy mastermind responsible, Burke must take a trip away from his usual stomping grounds.
  • Pain Management (2001) - Unable to return home while the events of the immediately previous book blow over, Burke's search for an inexplicable runaway lead him into alliance with renegades dangerous even for him.
  • Only Child (2002) - Burke returns to New York and investigates a killing of a teenager in a kink-soaked subculture.
  • Down Here (2004) - Wolfe, Burke's unrequited crush, is accused of murder. Burke and his crew must find the truth.
  • Mask Market (2006) - A child Burke once took back to her parents has come back into his life with less than benevolent designs.
  • Terminal (2007) - A prison acquaintance of Burke's badly needs money for a life-saving operation. His offer: a lucrative job of blackmailing some rich trash who got away with rape and murder many years back. Where Burke is involved, though, nothing is as straightforward as it first seems.
  • Another Life (2008) (The final Burke book) - An "associate" with powerful connections offers Burke help for a beleaguered friend and clean slates for the True Companions. In exchange, he has to track down the perpetrators of the impeccably-executed kidnapping of a Saudi Arabian prince's baby boy, a task that will require Burke to dig deeper into his past than ever before.

    Summaries of the non-Burke books: 
  • Shella (1993) - The Nondescript, quick to kill, "Ghost" has long been the ally of the abused Shella. Now, she has disappeared, and it's up to him to find her.
  • Batman: The Ultimate Evil (1995) - Batman discovers that his mother used to investigate child abuse, and ends up taking on a child sex tourism syndicate.
  • Two Trains Running (2005) - In the postwar period, Royal Beaumont has turned the dying mill town Locke City into a vice haven and held it against myriad enemies. However, he has now has drawn the attention of a rival syndicate that's playing for keeps, and race relations in the town are coming to a boil.
  • That's How I Roll (2012) - Fate made two very different rolls of the genetic dice for the brothers Esau and Tory Till. Esau is a Genius Cripple, Tory a superlative example of both sides of the Dumb Muscle coin. In order to keep his younger brother safe, Esau has been working as an assassin for two rival factions of the mob. When an interloper tries to butt in, he deals with them in his usual no-holds-barred fashion, starting a series of events that land him on death row. Even from there, however, he still has one last gambit to play.
  • The Weight (2010) - When the government offer "Sugar" a choice of either ratting out his heist buddies or going to jail, he takes one for the team. When he comes out, he is instructed by the mastermind to track down one of them who's gone missing and ensure the secrets are safe. What awaits him, however, is out of left field even for a hardened criminal like him.
  • The Getaway Man (2003) - Eddie has been stealing cars since well before he was legally allowed to drive. When his stint with two professional criminal brothers lands him in prison, he draws the attention of an infamous hijacker, one whose closest companion has designs on him of her own.
  • Haiku (2009) - an elderly Japanese martial artist enters the world of NYC's homeless. Less hard-boiled than Vachss' usual fare, more a meditation on the causes and potential solutions for homelessness.
  • Carbon (2019) - in a SF/F universe (!), ex-con Carbon must find a kidnapped child.

These novels provide examples of:

  • Abusive Parents: And then some. Burke mentions more than once that when he rescues runaways, he first takes them to a psychologist to ensure they didn't run away from home for good reason.
  • A World Half Full: Criminals lurk everywhere, the system is at best apathetic and at worst actively malicious and Burke can't save everyone or stamp out all crime. However, every scumbag he does get to put down means a few more innocents get to avoid being victims.
  • Acrofatic: Max spars with one briefly, and Gigi is very much an example, being 450 pounds and ninja-quick. Burke himself has bulk and speed but lacks a knockout punch.
  • Action Girl: Flood
  • All Love Is Unrequited: Burke falls in love with Flood, but she returns to Japan to continue her martial arts studies. He later falls for prosecuting attorney Wolfe (an obvious avatar for Alice Vachss) but as he's an ex-con, there's no chance.
  • Asshole Victim: Melissa Turnbridge from Terminal, a sexually abusive Fille Fatale. The perpetrators had only meant to Break the Haughty by raping her, not kill her outright.
    • A favorite target of Burke's side scams as well.
  • Badass Crew: The True Companions.
  • Badass Driver: Belle and Blossom, former getaway drivers (not from the same book). Max the Silent Drives Like Crazy, as he assumes that people will move aside for him on the road like they do on the sidewalk.
    • Also the main character in the standalone novel "The Getaway Driver".
  • Badass Israeli: Burke sometimes asks for and receives help from Israeli spooks working in the US.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Mole's dislike of Nazis is so intense, his first reaction is generally to ask Burke when he can blow them up. Burke himself once lost it so bad he killed a building full of people. Granted, they all deserved it, but even Burke was worried about losing it.
    • Burke hates child abusers in general, especially sexual abusers.
  • Best Served Cold: The real villain of Dead and Gone is an old enemy who wants Burke dead for what had been done to him.
  • The Big Rotten Apple
  • Black-and-Gray Morality: Burke and co. are mostly ex-convicts who fight even worse villains.
  • Blindfolded Trip
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Several times it's shown that the criminal mindset is not just about looser morals but is Different from that of citizens.
  • Bulletproof Vest: Burke makes a habit of wearing Kevlar.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: See the trope's quotes page for criticism of this idea in Another Life.
  • But Not Too Black: One book mentions the "paper bag trick".
  • Butt-Monkey: The closest thing this series comes to comic relief is wannabe mercenaries and survivalists, especially the White Power types. Burke scams them as an income flow by selling them fake knives and mercenary opportunities that will strand them in a foreign country, or speeches by Eli Weisenthal as actual recordings of Hitler's speeches. Similarly, none of his protagonists have any problems setting them up as patsies, and if they get upset and try to attack the protagonist, expect a Curb-Stomp Battle that the survivalist will be lucky to get a quick and somewhat undignified death from.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Various people, including Burke himself, self-identify as "thieves". Exactly how evil each one is differs.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: Claw from Terminal trained to the point where he can crush steel. The first book features Max bending a pair of brass knuckles in half. Ghost from the standalone book "Shella" has trained himself to the point where he can apply exact amounts of pressure to small points and can kill a man with one strike.
  • Children Are Innocent: Subverted in Dead and Gone when the child he's supposed to be retrieving turns out to be one of the ambushers. Also subverted in Sacrifice, where a kid refers to himself as "Satan's Child." Even Burke is disturbed.
  • Cold Sniper: Several, including Wesley, Falcon from the Cross series, and El Cannonero. Several short stories also center around them.
  • Combat Pragmatist: If Burke knows he's outmatched in a fair fight, he's not going to fight fair. The final battle with Mortay is a good example.
  • Contract on the Hitman: Many people think killing Burke is easier than paying him. This is a very bad idea.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Burke has one - abandoned at birth by his mother, who's implied to be a teen prostitute, brought up through the worst of the foster and juvenile system and generally seeing the dark side of society. So does pretty much every other character you meet. Anybody who doesn't is either well outside Burke's world or a Butt-Monkey.
  • Death Seeker: At the end of Terminal, Burke says that the prayer he prayed at that moment was the first to not ask in some way for death. The meaning is obvious. Burke tends to fall into this a lot, really.
  • Department of Child Disservices: Burke had an unpleasant childhood thanks to them, to say the least. Though played with in the sense that child advocates tend to be shown as well-meaning, but underfunded and sometimes deliberately knee-capped by higher-ups.
  • Does Not Like Guns: Max the Silent, and often Burke himself, depending on the novel.
  • Dragon Lady: Mama Wong, Max the Silent's surrogate mother and implied to be involved with organised crime.
  • The Dreaded: Wesley, even after his apparent suicide. It gets even worse if you read A Bomb Built In Hell, essentially Wesley's backstory and horrific even by this series' standards.
  • Enfant Terrible: Beryl in Mask Market, who only gets worse in adulthood.
  • Engineered Public Confession: Burke pulls this on the Big Bad of Dead and Gone.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Even neo-Nazis want nothing to do with child sex offenders.
  • Evil Brit: Strega sees Burke having to speak civilly to a self-proclaimed pedophile with a "semi-Brit" accent. This man becomes an occasionally recurring character.
  • Eyepatch of Power: Vachss himself in Real Life.
  • Eye Scream: Several across the series, such as Shella, when Ghost blinds a man with a sharpened car antenna.
  • False Reassurance: A case is recounted of this being pulled on an AIDS-positive Nigerian who is assured of not dying of his illness.
  • Family of Choice: Burke has no family by blood but has such close bonds with the people he's chosen for his family that he would kill anyone who hurt them. Possibly the Trope Namer, as Burke frequently uses the exact phrase.
  • Fan Disservice: Whenever there's child sex in the picture.
  • Fille Fatale: Melissa Turnbridge from Terminal is described as one, though the man who describes her that way is not exactly trustworthy.
  • Fluffy the Terrible: Burke owns a hulking Neapolitan mastiff named Pansy (this is so if the dog bites someone, no-one will take it seriously).
  • Friend on the Force: Earlier books had McGowan, but he retired after some time.
  • Genki Girl: Pepper.
  • Hand Cannon: Burke favours high-calibre rounds for quick manstopping. Averted when he doesn't want to kill anybody.
  • Handicapped Badass: Wheelchair-confined crack shot Gateman.
  • Hard Gay: Subverted in the Cross series with Princess: ripped, wearing pink from head to toe, thick makeup, straight as an arrow. Played straight with his teammate Rhino, who is essentially Princess' father figure and openly homosexual.
  • Henpecked Husband: Buddha from the Cross series, but what do you expect when your wife is named "So Long?"
  • Hide Your Children: Averted. Wesley commits suicide by blowing up a school full of the children of mobsters.
  • Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Michelle
  • If I Wanted You Dead...: Discussed in Another Life, where Burke tells a Saudi prince whose baby boy got kidnapped that if the kidnappers wanted to hurt the baby, they would have done it there and then. Later used when Burke confronts a street gang that tried to make trouble for Gateman. Burke tells them to line up and have their photos taken, reminding them that they would already be dead if Burke and co. wanted it so.
  • If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: In Batman: The Ultimate Evil, anyone attempting to join the child sex ring has to be willing to have sex with a child in front of other members.
  • Improvised Armour: Mentioned in one book, where inmates who suspect they're going to be attacked will stuff lots of newspaper under their clothing to reduce the effectiveness of shivs.
  • "Instant Death" Radius: Max is generally referred to as having one, and has demonstrated it on a few occasions. Terminal even points out the "stay out of his reach" aspect of the trope.
  • It Will Never Catch On: In the prologue to A Bomb Built in Hell, Andrew Vachss notes that the rejection slips he got from publishers back in The '70s cited Chinese street gangs and schoolyard shootings as being too unrealistic.
  • Knowledge Broker: Wolfe goes into the business in later books.
  • The Last DJ: Why Wolfe loses her job.
  • Last Stand: In Terminal the Prof prepares to do this after a sniper badly injures him, but the crew manage to get him out before the enemy arrives.
    • Burke does one early in the series when a drug deal goes bad, and gets packed off to jail; when he gets out, there's something good waiting.
  • Letterbox Arson: When the New York City Subway starts using bulletproof ticket booths, Burke notes that any ex-con knows how to get round that; by using this trope and waiting for the ticket-seller to open the booth for you. One ticket-seller couldn't get the door open in time.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Max is death in close quarters, but also able to shrug off blows that should leave anyone a-hurting.
  • Mad Scientist: The Mole, a fervently anti-Nazi Jew who specializes in bombs, weaponry, breaking and entering, biology and computer hacking, who lives in a series of tunnels he constructed under a junkyard.
  • The Mafiya: In Dead and Gone Burke meets some and has their leader assassinated. In Mask Market this is subverted (!) as the Russian thugs are actually Russian Jews.
  • Magical Negro : The Prof
  • Master of Disguise: Subverted with Burke in the early part of the series: he's simply so bland most people don't notice him. Later, after Burke acquires significant scarring from a near-fatal shooting, Burke can't disguise himself and doesn't try. Played straight with Max, who has such excellent muscle control he can change the shape and hollows of his face to, for example, look like an old man.
  • Monster Clown: A child sex offender dresses as one of these in Strega.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Not very difficult to figure out when he calls it The Ultimate Evil, is it?
  • Multinational Team: Burke's True Companions is... diverse.
  • Music Soothes the Savage Beast: Burke ends Flood's Heroic BSoD by playing "Angel Baby" by Rosie and the Originals on his car's cassette player, and inviting her to dance to it.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Often averted: if somebody calls themselves by an absurd or bombastic name, they're probably a fraud or the result of ego and hype. Played straight with a martial artist dubbing himself "Mortay", however.
  • N-Word Privileges: Thoroughly averted, with various characters throwing slurs around and no one batting an eyelid about it.
    • Although White Power types often end up dead.
  • Never Found the Body: Wesley, who apparently blew himself up.
    • Word of God states Wesley is dead and will not be coming back. Well, as a living being: his ghost apparently has taken root in Burke's psyche, at least in a few novels, as a symbol of Burke's dark and homicidal side.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In Terminal, one character describes how gangs putting out hits on suspected rats leads to cons ratting out for real.
  • No One Could Survive That!: In Dead and Gone, when the ambush on Burke goes awry the ambushers go for a Boom, Headshot!. It doesn't take, somehow.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: The Big Bad of Dead and Gone tries to pull one on Burke, but it ultimately doesn't save him.
  • Nothing Personal: One child sex offender tries to offer this to Burke in Strega. It is contrasted with another self-proclaimed pedophile who waxes lyrical about personal bonds with the boys and shows disdain for those who go "commercial".
    • Who turns out to not care a damn bit and is just in it for the money.
  • Nothing Up My Sleeve: Burke hides a length of chain this way in Dead and Gone.
    • In Terminal he does the same with some rebar.
    • And a .357 zip gun in Flood.
      • In the standalone novel Shella, this is a specialty of the main character, Ghost.
  • Obfuscating Insanity: The Prof, who acted as Burke's mentor in prison. He pretends to be a mad homeless street preacher with no legs.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Burke uses this on several marks over the course of the series, usually to good effect.
  • Organ Theft: Mentioned in a Noodle Incident where Burke acted as a go-between.
  • Parental Abandonment: Burke was dumped on the state foster care system by his underage mother (assumed to be a prostitute); an act for which he holds a great deal of bitterness.
  • Police Brutality: Discussed at length in Terminal. See the quotes page.
  • Posthumous Character: Wesley. Also, Melissa Turnbridge from Terminal.
  • Pretender Diss: Burke was a mercenary in the past. He knows what it's really like: no glamorous work. Part of his "day job" involves scamming those fool enough to want to be mercenaries themselves.
  • Private Detective: Burke, albeit of the unlicensed kind.
  • The Profiler: Burke studied pedophiles and other wackos in prison, initially just to learn how to scam them.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: Max the Silent, a mute Mongolian... from Tibet... somehow... martial arts expert.
  • Pun: I put a slug into the pay phone—another slug answered.
  • Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: Terminal recounts Max letting Muay Thai practitioners knee him twice when he clearly could have gotten them first.
  • Punk in the Trunk: Burke often hides one of his friends (Max the Silent, or the Prof armed with a shotgun) in his car's large trunk when going to a meeting with potentially dangerous dudes.
  • Revealing Cover-Up: Subverted in Another Life; Burke and crew have a scene blown up rather than burned down in order to erase evidence, and he rationalises it to another character by saying that in that bad neighbourhood, druggies' "experiments" going boom is normal, but arson is not.
  • Revenge: A recurring trope.
  • Rhymes on a Dime: The Prof enjoys talking like this; generally if he's not speaking in rhyme then things have become very, very bleak.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Burke goes on one in the climax of one book, but unlike most, deals with the extremely negative psychological impact.
  • Sawed-Off Shotgun: The Prof favours one.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: A recurring trope; real money is one of the few things that can get the otherwise-useless police to get their act together, often to the detriment of Burke and co.
  • Serial Killings, Specific Target: Burke mentions this was a favorite tactic of Professional Killer Wesley. He would kill one man, then burn down the building so the police would have a bunch of other possible victims/motives to investigate.
  • Series Continuity Error: Max used to be said to be Mongolian; in Terminal he's at first suddenly Tibetan, then Mongolian again later.
    • The first novel Flood states clearly that Max is from Tibet. Whether he's a Mongolian from Tibet isn't mentioned, just that Mama Wong thought it was funny that Burke assumed he was Chinese. Nevertheless, because later books don't make it clear, the confusion is understandable.
      • It is worth noting historically that Tibet was completely conquered by the Mongols in the 13th Century and there was much integration and connection between the two cultures continued for centuries, to the extent that the new Mongol script commissioned by Kublai Khan was based on Tibetan.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Definitely cynical.
  • Snuff Film:
    • In Flood, Burke is told about a snuff film producer called Goldor and is shown a black-and-white silent video of a man in a mask murdering a female undercover agent sent to investigate him. Burke points out that it's a Murder One rap, but is told Goldor himself was wearing the mask so there are no witnesses, as he films and edits his own product.
    • In Blue Belle, Burke is offered a bounty to catch a serial killer who's kidnapping and sniping prostitutes from a van. When he tracks down the garage that holds the van, he finds a tripod camera setup near a bloody drain in the floor, and another set up inside the van, which has automatic doors so the killers can film their victims being shot and sell it commercially.
  • Stout Strength: Rhino is described as being enormously fat in the Cross books; he can also crush your skull like a grape.
  • Teens Are Monsters: Recurring but rarely central.
  • This Is Reality:
    • Wolfe tells Burke as such in Mask Market.
    • In Terminal one guy tells Burke that "those movies where they put undercovers in prison, never happen".
  • Those Wacky Nazis: Neo-Nazis, lots of them.
    • On a sliding scale of wackiness: some neo-Nazis are essentially professional criminals: they're racist, but not particularly fervent about their ideology, and usually joined the group due to being in prison. In an early novel, a character explains why he's a member of the Aryan Brotherhood and how it got him through prison. Any who haven't been in prison are likely to be a Butt-Monkey, however.
  • Tranquil Fury:
    You know what it takes to sit across the table from a man, listen to him talk, look into his eyes ... and then blow his brains all over the wallpaper?
    Nothing.
    And the more of that you have, the easier it is.
    • An unusual treatment in that Vachss approaches this as what it is: a sign of serious mental illness, and incredibly dangerous. Wesley never speaks above a whisper or loses his temper in the series, and he's by far the most vicious killer in the series.
  • Tunnel King / The Short Guy with Glasses: The Mole
  • Tyke-Bomb: In Dead and Gone Burke learns that the child he had been tasked with retrieving was made into a killer by Neo-Nazis.
    • Central premise of A Bomb Built in Hell, the unofficial predecessor to the Burke Series.
  • The Vamp: Subverted with Strega, who acts like this trope but Burke notes that a true vamp would hold out the promise of sex as a carrot. She's actually a child abuse victim acting out her abuse when she has sex with Burke.
  • Villain Protagonist: Burke and co. are this from a legal perspective, though they retain the moral high ground by restricting their activities to Asshole Victims and those the law can't touch. Cross and crew have fewer qualms.
  • What a Piece of Junk: Burke drives the "ultimate New York taxicab". Its Gadgeteer Genius owner committed suicide and left Burke the car in payment of an unpaid debt. Flood and Strega go into detail on its capabilities.
  • Writer on Board: Vachss doesn't shy from showing his dissatisfaction with government and society.

Alternative Title(s): Burke

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