"Lord of the asphalt jungle."
EVERYBODY PAYS
Andrew Vachss Stories
"Vachss [is] in the first rank of contemporary American crime writers." The Kansas City Star
|
Vintage Crime | Trade Paperback
Author of BORN BAD A hit man defies the confines of a life sentence to avenge his sister's batterer. An immaculately dressed man hires a street gang to extract his daughter from a Central American prison, for reasons that are mysterious as they are deadly. A two-bit graffiti artist with a taste for Nazi-ganda finds himself face-to-face with three punks out to make a mark of their ownliterallywith a tattoo needle.
From neo-noir master Andrew Vachss comes Everybody Pays, 38 white-knuckle rides into a netherworld of pederasts and prostitutes, stick-up kids and fall guyswhere private codes of crime and punishment pulsate beneath a surface system of law and and order, and our moral compass spins frighteninly out of control. Here is street-grit prose that has earned Vachss comparisons to Chandler, Cain and Hammettand the ingenious plot twists that transform the double-cross into an expression of retribution, the dark deed into a thing of beauty.
Electrifying and enigmatic. Everybody Pays is a sojourn into the nature of evil itselfa trip made all the more frightening by its proximity to our fron doorstep.
|
"Andrew Vachss has become a cult favorite, and for good reason." Cosmopolitan |
BRUTAL READING AT IT'S BEST Everybody Pays is perfect for hard-core fans of true crime. In this collection of 44 original stories, you'll find action, romance, thrilling suspense filled drama, and Vachss' specialty, the honor driven double cross. If you have not read Andrew Vachss' work, Everybody Pays is the place to start. Vachss' writing will choke your heart like DeNiro in Heat when he is forced to walk away from his last chance at true love. Everybody Pays is a razor-wire collection of the coldest, sharpest crime stories you've ever been witness to. No one can touch Vachss' stripped down, hit and run style of writing. When you read Everybody Pays you will find yourself falling into the hard poetry of language that is Vachss' unique talent. The mix is perfect, from Proving It, Vachss' best love story since Shella, to gut-wrenching tragedy of evil done to innocence as found in Dress Up Day, to a voyage for truth in Searcher. Everybody Pays is an original collection from Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and it includes a very anticipated Cross novella, which is the basis for a film in development at Warner Brothers. |
"A bizarre, fast-paced tour of the criminal psyche...Has a grim authenticity." Philadelphia Inquirer |
"Never-ending fascination...you'll come up for air bruised and skinned." Chicago Sun-Times |
"Andrew Vachss is unique among modern writers; no one else comes close to the raw power and intellectual ambiguity that he manifests so elegantly, so coldly." Clarion-Ledger [Jackson, MS] |
Other Reviews
From BooklistSeptember 15, 1999Vachss is widely recognized for his dark, New York City based Burke crime novels in which the sometime criminal and his cadre of vigilantes battle those who exploit women and children. Justice in Burke's world is never meted out by officialdom, but by a Solomon-like street code set in motion by Burke. These short stories mostly deal with the same theme, though there are some in which we see the world through the eyes of the criminal. Vachss, a lawyer who works as an advocate for abused women and children, clearly believes most abusers and killers are made not born. Stories such as "Homeless", "Dress Up Day" (with an eerie Columbine angle), and "Last Date" all reflect that view. Mixed in are some science fiction, a little fantasy, and a novella, "Everybody Pays" in which an abuser meets a just end in typically Vachssian style. Some of the pieces work better than others, but all are unmistakably Vachss and will attract his sizable audience. Wes Lukowsky © 1999, American Library Association. All rights reserved. |
From Kirkus ReviewsNobody's earned the right to more attitude than Vachss, a former social services caseworker and prisoner director whose legal clientele is restricted to children. But his swaggering, strutting novels (CHOICE OF EVIL, p. 481, etc.) often seem to revel in the catalogue of unwholesome horrors his macho heroes avenge. Vachss' stripped-down, pumped-up prose shows to better advantage in a good half of these 38 stories, since the unspeakable revelations tend to cut off the heat just as the pot is about to boil over. There's room for some hard-won tenderness, too, in stories like ``Proving It'' (a released convict's not-exactly-romantic reunion) and ``True Colors'' (how far will a gang-banger go for his girl?). The four stories about Cross, the Chicago crew chief who always delivers because he has no higher loyalty than the job at hand, are a suitably tough counterweight, along with the title novella, in which Cross and his crew contract to rescue a young woman from a Latin American prison (think Mission: Impossible with a sideshow cast and a body count through the roof). Only the "Underground" stories, which wallow in the unspeakable details of child-abuse hell, go over the topor, maybe more accurately, under the bottom.![]() |
Book Description"Vachss is a contemporary master."The Atlanta Journal-Constitution"Vachss' writing is like a dark roller coaster ride of fear, love and hate." The TimesPicayune A hit man defies the confines of a life sentence to avenge his sister's batterer. An immaculately dressed man hires a street gang to extract his daughter from a Central American prison, for reasons as mysterious as they are deadly. A two-bit graffiti artist with a taste for Nazi-ganda finds himself face-to-face with three punks out to make a mark of their ownliterallywith a tattoo needle. From neo-noir master Andrew Vachss comes Everybody Pays, 38 white-knuckle rides into a netherworld of pederasts and prostitutes, stick-up kids and fall guyswhere private codes of crime and punishment pulsate beneath a surface system of law and order, and our moral compass spins frighteningly out of control. Here is the street-grit prose that has earned Vachss comparisons to Chandler, Cain, and Hammettand the ingenious plot twists that transform the double-cross into an expression of retribution, the dark deed into a thing of beauty. Electrifying and enigmatic, Everybody Pays is a sojourn into the nature of evil itselfa trip made all the more frightening by its proximity to our front doorstep. |
![]() ISBN 0-679-75336-2 | Jan 2001 Vintage Crime |
![]() ISBN 0-679-75336-2 | Aug 1994 Vintage Crime |
![]() ISBN 88-7684-427-9 | 1997 Italian Edition |
Main Menu |
Andrew Vachss |
Vachss Novels
Read Laurence Shames interview with Andrew Vachss
for the February 1986 edition of Playboy.
Hard Looks |
Vachss Profile |
Buy Stuff