“What are Andrew Vachss’s Best Books?” We looked at all of Vachss’s authored bibliography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!

We took all of the books written by Andrew Vachss and looked at their Goodreads, Amazon, and LibraryThing scores, ranking them against one another to see which books came out on top. The books are ranked in our list below based on which titles have the highest overall score between all 3 review sites in comparison with all of the other books by the same author. The process isn’t super scientific and in reality, most books aren’t “better” than other books as much as they are just different. That being said, we do enjoy seeing where our favorites landed, and if you aren’t familiar with the author at all, the rankings can help you see what books might be best to start with.

The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page.

Happy Scrolling!

The Top Book’s Of Andrew Vachss

36 ) Drawing Dead

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 32
• Amazon: 35
• LibraryThing: 34

Even the deadliest gangs in Chicagoland fear the Cross Crew and carefully avoid their cinderblock bunker headquarters: Red 71 is well known as the last place you’d want to go . . . unless you’re willing to risk it being the last place you’ll ever go. The Crew is notorious for its ruthless efficiency and cold-blooded cunning. Why, then, would anyone be foolhardy enough to threaten them – and even more dangerous – their loved ones? As Cross catches the scent of a far-reaching conspiracy, he realizes that it all connects to an unexplained event in his past: a massacre from which he emerged inexplicably unscathed, save for the blue mark on his face that pulses when danger is near. That scar has been throbbing more frequently of late. . . . If he’s reading the signs accurately, Cross might find himself again facing a terrible menace that is not altogether human.

35 ) Blackjack

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 31
• Amazon: 33
• LibraryThing: 31

34 ) Race War

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 29
• Amazon: 36
• LibraryThing: 25

From the Arctic Circle to the equatorial jungles – from the most isolated wilderness to the overpopulated city – any place can be a hunting ground. It all depends on your choice of game. For Predator, that game is man, so he heads to the grounds with the biggest trophies: the Paloverde State Penitentiary. They say that when you kill a killer, all his kills belong to you, and Predator’s looking to rack up the big numbers. Crime/suspense novelist Andrew Vachss has earned a reputation for writing tough stories with his hard-hitting Burke series of novels. Now, with Aliens vs. Predator writer Randy Stradley, he takes his familiar setting of criminals, bigots, and opportunists and drops a Predator into the mix. The result is a Molotov cocktail called Predator: Race War.

33 ) Shockwave

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 30
• Amazon: 24
• LibraryThing: 32

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. The cops pick up Homer, a schizophrenic, who has been showing off a wristwatch he says God gave him. The watch is engraved with a symbol that matches one of the dead man’s tattoos. Even though Homer could never have inflicted such damage on a man twice his weight and half his age, he is immediately arrested. Dolly’s friend Mack, the director of the area’s mental-health outreach program, is outraged. Dolly is outraged, too, but with connections like Dell, she is anything but helpless. As the search for the real killer pulls them deeper into the world of hate groups, they make a shocking discovery.

32 ) Urban Renewal

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 28
• Amazon: 24
• LibraryThing: 32

The man known only as Cross and his multi-skilled team of urban mercenaries are back, this time invading one of Chicago’s least desirable neighborhoods in a land-grab that has the entire underworld puzzled. Chicago has no shortage of deadly gangs. They all know the Cross Crew occupies a cinderblock bunker called Red 71. The Crew is notorious for its deadly efficiency and its disinterest in anything but money. So why has it turned from seller to buyer, grabbing up houses on a block where only a few holdouts against urban decay remain? Both the cops and the underworld are watching closely…but are they the only ones?

31 ) Signwave

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 25
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 29

Once a mercenary, later an assassin, and now living a different life, Dell has bone-marrow-deep loyalty and protective instincts that know no bounds when it comes to his wife, Dolly, a former battle-field nurse, and their close-knit group of Dolly’s friends and Dell’s allies. When Dolly receives a thinly veiled threat, Dell reverts to his old ways to untangle the background of a prominent local figure, George Byron Benton, whose actions have awakened Dell’s obsessive need for security. This target combines the deadly patience of a gila monster and a complex agenda – including a public life that’s all elaborate disguise. To penetrate Benton’s dense facade, Dell methodically works his way through the only reliable source of news in the area – a blog called Undercurrents. If he manages to track Benton down, Dell will have to decide how far he is willing to go to recapture the sense of safety that Benton has stolen. With Andrew Vachss’s trademark razor-sharp dialogue and inimitable prose style, SignWave – the third entry in the Aftershock series – is guaranteed to reverberate powerfully long after it has been read.

30 ) That’s How I Roll

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 27
• Amazon: 24
• LibraryThing: 30

A deeply revealing novel from the master of the hardboiled, Andrew Vachss, about an assassin whose love forced him to kill his own conscience. Execution looms, but no prison can hold Esau Till’s mind. Or his love. He sits on death row, writing his life story – his last chance to protect his brother, Tory, after he’s gone. And, as too many have learned, when it comes to protecting his baby brother, Esau Till is a man without boundaries. When the genetic cards were dealt, Esau drew a genius IQ but a horribly crippled body. His brother Tory drew a “slow” mind but almost superhuman strength. Esau quickly learned the only way to guarantee his baby brother’s safety was to make himself indispensable to certain people. A self-taught explosives expert, he became the top assassin for two rival local mobs. Now, as the State prepares to take his life, Esau plots going all-in on the last and most deadly hand he will ever play.

29 ) Haiku

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 26
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 25

From the author of the acclaimed Burke series: a searing new novel that follows a band of homeless outcasts on a mission to recover what each has lost. Ho is an ancient sensei who began training as a child, until war changed him forever. When his dismissive arrogance causes the death of a student he called ‘daughter,’ Ho renounces not only his possessions but also his role as master, roaming the streets of an always-cold city in search of a way to atone. As if magnetized, a group slowly forms around him: Michael, an addicted gambler who finally lost himself; Ranger, a psychotic Vietnam veteran for whom reality is an ever-revolving door; Lamont, once a fearless street-gang warlord who degenerated into hopeless alcoholism when the literati who discovered his poetry discarded him; Target, a relentless ‘clanger’ who speaks only by echoing speech sounds; and Brewster, an obsessive collector of 1950s ‘hardboiled’ paperbacks whose stash is housed in an abandoned building even vermin avoid. Late one night, Michael 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 the others to search for her. But what transforms a halfhearted effort into a mission is the news that the building housing Brewster’s ‘library’ is slated for demolition. Knowing that Brewster could not possibly survive such a loss is enough to bring them together in a search for the ultimate problem-solver: money. Each frantic knock opens another barred door as demolition draws nearer. And the answers to each man’s questions trigger shocking explosions that hit you with all the visceral power we have come to expect from this fierce and dynamic writer.

28 ) Two Trains Running

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 23
• Amazon: 34
• LibraryThing: 21

Best known for his series about Burke, a career criminal with a uniquely larcenous family, Andrew Vachss has penned a standalone novel sure to win new fans and delight those familiar with his earlier works. Set in the year 1959, Two Trains Running is a complex moral tale of family, violence, love, and atonement.

27 ) Hard Candy

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 33
• Amazon: 10
• LibraryThing: 34

Now a paid assassin, Burke is on a collision course with a man named Train, who runs a “safehouse” for kids. But when Burke learns that his suspicions about Train are right (the safehouse keeps kids in harm’s way), he becomes his own gun-for-hire.

26 ) The Ultimate Evil

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 22
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 24

In a compellingly written fantasy novel, bestselling author Andrew Vachss brings his razor-sharp talent to one of the most legendary characters of the 20th century–The Batman. While aiding a social worker in her crusade against child abuse, millionaire Bruce Wayne uncovers a shocking revelation about his childhood and his transformation into The Batman–knowledge that nearly destroys him.

25 ) The Questioner

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 33
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 34

An all-new novelette by Andrew Vachss, author of the acclaimed Burke series. For all secrets created, a tiny percentage is kept against any intrusion. The ultimate extractor of such secrets is the Questioner – a man who has trained himself to become empty, who uses that emptiness to listen fully, to sense what others need to hear, to respond in ways that lead them to reveal their most protected thoughts. Disdaining torture or coercion, he mines those secrets with nothing more than conversation. For those who meet his price – governments, multinational corporations, and the most complex criminal organizations – the Questioner obtains information. The secrets he learns can create or topple empires, win or destroy fortunes, lubricate the gears of the world…or grind them to a halt. But as the Questioner moves from one target to the next, just beyond the outer edge of his probes lurks something dangerous to his own emptiness. It will force him to turn his powers inward, to ask how he became what he is, and to find a truth he has never sought. Andrew Vachss has been a federal investigator (USPHS), a social services caseworker, and directed a maximum security institution for “aggressive-violent” youths.

24 ) Aftershock

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 21
• Amazon: 19
• LibraryThing: 27

Andrew Vachss stabs his trademark hard-boiled style into the heart of a quaint little seacoast village . . . one seething with corruption beneath its idyllic facade. After a life in various war zones, Dell and Dolly have settled in this town, fulfilling Dolly’s lifelong dream. Both have had to sacrifice their prior identities: Dell had been a mercenary originally trained by the French Foreign Legion, and Dolly had a nursing career with Médicins Sans Frontières. She transitions smoothly into civilian life, becoming a part-time foster mother to dozens of teenagers, while Dell has no interest in the town or its people. But when the shining star of the girls’ softball team shoots and kills the most popular boy in school, Dolly asks Dell to uncover the true motive behind this inexplicable crime.

23 ) False Allegations

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 17
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 19

“In the first rank of American crime writers. . . . Next to Vachss, Chandler, Cain and Hammett look like choirboys.” –Cleveland Plain Dealer Burke–ex-con, mercenary, sometime killer–makes his living preying on New York’s most vicious predators and avenging their innocent victims. But in Andrew Vachss’s mercilessly suspenseful new novel, Burke finds himself working the other side of the street, where guilt and innocence are as disposable as the sheets in a Times Square hotel–and as dirty. Burke’s new employer is Kite, a fanatical crusader who specializes in debunking “false allegations of child sexual abuse. Kite has a case that may be the real thing, but needs Burke to tell him if it is. And if mere money can’t persuade Burke to cooperate, Kite has plenty of other incentives at his disposal–including a fanatical bodyguard with a taste for corsets and brass knuckles.

22 ) The Weight

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 24
• Amazon: 14
• LibraryThing: 23

Andrew Vachss returns with a mesmerizing novel about a hard-core thief who’s about to embark on a job that will alter his life forever. Sugar is that rarest of commodities: an old-school professional thief, as tough and loyal as a pit bull, packing 255 pounds of muscle. When he’s picked out of a photo array in a vicious rape case, the cops find his apartment empty. A stakeout catches Sugar when he returns . . . carrying a loaded pistol. The sex-crime cops get nothing from their interrogation, but a streetwise detective figures out why Sugar offers no alibi: at the time of the rape, a holiday-weekend break-in job was being pulled at a jewelry store. The DA offers Sugar two options: give up his partners in the jewelry heist and walk, or plead to the rape he didn’t commit – and he’ll toss in the gun charge. For Sugar, that’s not two options; he takes the weight. When Sugar finishes his time, his money is waiting for him, held by Solly, the mastermind behind the jewelry heist. But Solly tells Sugar that one of the heist crew was actually sent by another planner – and that planner has just died. In Sugar’s world, all loose threads must be cut.

21 ) A Bomb Built in Hell

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 17
• Amazon: 14
• LibraryThing: 28

Andrew Vachss’ pre-Flood novel A Bomb Built in Hell was written in 1973. It was rejected by every publisher, one of whom described it as a “political horror story,” others of whom berated it for its “lack of realism,” including such things as Chinese youth gangs and the fall of Haiti. And the very idea of someone entering a high school with the intent of destroying every living person inside was just too … ludicrous. Readers of Vachss’ Burke series will immediately recognize Wesley, the main character of A Bomb Built in Hell. This is his story.

20 ) Blossom

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 33
• Amazon: 8
• LibraryThing: 17

In this savagely convincing novel, Burke finds himself in a fading Indiana mill town, trying to clear a boy charged with a series of sexually motivated shootings. He’s intent on finding the real sniper–and his unlikely ally is a beautiful woman named Blossom, who has her own reasons for finding the murderer, as well as her own idea of vengeance.

19 ) Mask Market

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 19
• Amazon: 14
• LibraryThing: 22

They meet in a no-name diner. A shadowy man hands Burke a CD-dossier of someone he wants found. Minutes later, as Burke watches from an alley, his client is gunned down by a professional hunter-killer team. Burke slips away, unsure if he’s been spotted. Later, when he examines the dossier, he discovers that the missing woman is Beryl Preston, a girl he’d rescued from a brutal pimp twenty years earlier – when she was only 13 – and returned to her father.

18 ) Choice of Evil

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 13
• Amazon: 24
• LibraryThing: 11

When his girlfriend, Crystal Beth, is gunned down at a gay rights rally in Central Park, Burke, the underground man-for-hire and expert hunter of predators, vows vengeance. But someone beats him to the task: a shadowy killer who calls himself Homo Erectus and who seems determined to wipe gay bashers from the face of the earth. As the killer’s body count rises, most citizens are horrified, but a few see him as a hero, and they hire Burke to track him down…and help him escape. In Choice of Evil, Burke is forced to confront his most harrowing mystery: the mind of an obsessive serial killer. And soon the emotionally void method behind the killer’s madness becomes terrifyingly familiar, reminding Burke of his childhood partner, Wesley, the ice-man assassin who never missed, even when the target was himself. Has Wesley come back from the dead? The whisper-stream says so.

16 ) Terminal

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 10
• Amazon: 19
• LibraryThing: 17

“You know why we hate you? Not because you don’t know what we know, but because, if you did, you wouldn’t give a damn. So I’m sitting here, waiting to commit extortion, and planning a lot worse. I’m what you’d call a criminal. That’s why I’ll never be you. And I’m proud of it.” –from Terminal When the former shot-caller of the country’s most feared white supremacist prison gang contacts Burke, he comes with references … and the promise of a huge score. Terminally ill, the ex-con needs major cash to gamble on the long-shot possibility of a cure that’s available only in Switzerland. The only card he has to play is a small-time degenerate who paid for protection when they were in prison together. That professional bottom-feeder claims he personally buried the body of a thirteen-year-old girl who had been raped, tortured, and finally killed by three rich men more than thirty years ago–and that he’s holding irrefutable proof. But such a complicated extortion scheme needs the hand of a specialist crew, so Burke is offered a piece of the action. He and his outlaw family put together a lethal plan.

16 ) Another Life

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 13
• Amazon: 19
• LibraryThing: 14

In this cutting and dark thriller series, Burke returns to save the life of his ‘father,’ while searching for the abducted child of an oil sheik. The Detroit Free Press has said ‘There’s no way to put a [Vachss book] down once you’ve begun.’

14 ) Safe House

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 6
• Amazon: 24
• LibraryThing: 13

A beautiful outlaw hires Burke to shield one of her charges from a vengeful ex with fetishes for Nazism and torture. But the stalker has a protector who can shut down her operation for good.

14 ) Only Child

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 9
• Amazon: 19
• LibraryThing: 15

After years on the run, Burke is desperate to return to his native New York, the only way he can reconnect with his outlaw “family.” But to survive in their part of the City, where reputation is everything, Burke must take major risks to reestablish his presence. So when a Mafia man contacts him about the murder-as-message of his sixteen-year-old daughter—the offspring of what he calls an “outside the tribe” affair that he must keep secret at all costs—Burke’s depleted bankroll persuades him to step out of the shadows and do something he hasn’t done in years . . . actually investigate a crime.

13 ) Shella

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 33
• Amazon: 6
• LibraryThing: 3

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.

12 ) Down Here

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 11
• Amazon: 13
• LibraryThing: 15

Publisher’s Weekly Burke is back with a vengeance, and with the full complement of underground irregulars who’ve populated his dozen or so previous noir adventures. For starters, there’s Max the Silent and the Prof (short for both Professor and Prophet), Pepper, Mole and Michelle, street folks all, as well as the giant menacing rottweiler known as Bruiser, who protects the beautiful crime fighter Wolfe. No series offers a richer world of night people, or one as dark and brutal. For the Burke fan, plot becomes almost secondary to the immersion into Vachss’s thrillingly seductive downtown Manhattan shadow land. But this installment has a terrific hook as well: Burke and company must come to the rescue when Wolfe, a righteous former prosecutor specializing in sex crimes, is framed for the attempted murder of one of the serial perps she once put away, a lowlife named John Anson Wychek. Vachss’s prose is at its brittle best in his presentation of the case against the taciturn Wolfe, as well as Wychek’s criminal past.

11 ) The Getaway Man

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 20
• Amazon: 6
• LibraryThing: 9

Eddie starts stealing cars long before he’s old enough to get a license, driven by a force so compelling that he never questions, just obeys. After a series of false starts, interrupted by stays in juvenile institutions and a state prison term, Eddie’s skills and loyalty attract the attention of J.C., a near-legendary hijacker. When he gets out, Eddie becomes the driver for J.C.’s ultra-professional crew. J.C., the master planner, is finally ready to pull off that one huge job every con dreams of … the Retirement Score. But some roads have twists even a professional getaway man couldn’t foresee … Andrew Vachss, a writer widely acclaimed for breathing new life and death into the crime genre, here presents a classic noir tale, relentlessly displaying and dissecting not guilt, but innocence. Read preview > Genre: Mystery

10 ) Heart Transplant

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 13
• Amazon: 2
• LibraryThing: 19

Heart Transplant is about a nine-year-old boy named Sean. His only experience with parenting was the men his alcoholic mother made him call “Daddy.” Sean comes home from school one day and opens the door to a pair of corpses, his latest “father’s” dope deal ended badly. The police show and the “Welfare lady” is telling Sean how much he’s going to love his foster home when an older man arrives. He tells the social worker that he’s the father of the dead man and Sean is his “grandson.” He offers Sean a choice: come and live with him or take his chances with foster care. Life with the man Sean comes to call “Pop” is paradise compared to the past. A smart student, Sean listens to Pop more than he ever did to a teacher. Still an Outsider, Sean finally has a home that is welcoming and safe. When Sean hits puberty he’s bullied daily and his “Outsider” status is cruelly confirmed. Sean never tells, but Pop discovers the truth one day and lets Sean know he hurts when Sean is hurt too. Sean’s first experience with empathy comes with an understanding of what emotional abuse is too. Sean’s understanding of bullying comes when Pop shows him its true roots – and antidote. Pop gives his son what he needs most: A heart transplant. After Pop’s death Sean learns the special sacrifice his father made to give him that transplant, and that final understanding is Sean’s legacy. Read preview > Genre: Children’s Fiction

9 ) Pain Management

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 11
• Amazon: 14
• LibraryThing: 7

Following a failed assassination attempt, Burke flees New York City to eke out a difficult existence as an enforcer for hire in the Pacific Northwest while he waits for it to become safe to return home, until he takes a job tracking down a runaway teenager, which brings him face to face with a fanatical group of criminal samaritans who supply drugs to those suffering from chronic pain. Read preview > Genre: Mystery

8 ) Flood

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 7
• Amazon: 8
• LibraryThing: 12

Burke’s newest client is a woman named Flood, who has the face of an angel, the body of a high-priced stripper, and the skills of a professional executioner. She wants Burke to find a monster for her – so she can kill him with her bare hands. In this thriller, Andrew Vachss’s renegade private eye teams up with a lethally gifted avenger to follow a child’s murderer through the catacombs of New York, where every alley is blind and the penthouses are as dangerous as the basements. Read preview > Genre: Mystery

5 ) Dead and Gone

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 2
• Amazon: 19
• LibraryThing: 1

When Burke, a career criminal and man for hire, agrees to act as the middleman in an exchange of money for a kidnapped child, things go horribly wrong when his partner is killed and Burke himself is left wounded, his appearance radically altered, as he embarks on a a dangerous quest for revenge against those responsible. Read preview > Genre: Mystery

5 ) Strega

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 3
• Amazon: 12
• LibraryThing: 7

Burke is an ex-con with many ways of earning a buck and his own code of honor: he only does private eye work if the money and the client are right. Strega is an icy, beautiful Mafia princess who offers Burke money and sex to find a piece of kiddie porn. Burke agrees and hits the streets with his bizarre friends to plunge into the nightmarish world of child abuse. Read preview > Genre: Mystery

5 ) Veil’s Visit

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 16
• Amazon: 4
• LibraryThing: 2

Genre: Mystery

3 ) Blue Belle

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 1
• Amazon: 14
• LibraryThing: 5

Burke is back in his most tightly wound, electrifying thriller to date. In Blue Belle, a savage gang is hunting and killing teenage prostitute. A murderous martial arts expert is trying to set up a deal with Burke’s friend Max. And complicating it all is Belle, a voluptuous exotic dancer who has worked her way into Burke’s heart. Read preview > Genre: Mystery

3 ) Down in the Zero

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 4
• Amazon: 10
• LibraryThing: 6

Vachss has reinvented detective fiction and, in the person of Burke, his haunted, hell-ridden P.I., has given readers a new kind of hero. Investigating an epidemic of apparent suicides among the teenagers of a wealthy suburb, Burke discovers a sinister connection between the anguish of the young and the activities of an elite sadomasochistic underground. Read preview > Genre: Mystery

2 ) Sacrifice

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 5
• Amazon: 2
• LibraryThing: 10

What–or who–could turn a gifted little boy into a murderous thing that calls itself “Satan’s Child”? In search of an answer, Burke travels from a festering welfare hotel to a neat frame house where a voodoo priestess presides over a congregation of assassins. Read preview > Genre: Mystery

1 ) Footsteps of the Hawk

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 8
• Amazon: 4
• LibraryThing: 4

A pulse-quickening new crime novel featuring Burke–scam artist, private investigator, sometime killer–whose sole passion is defending children who fall victim to New York City’s darker appetites, Footsteps of the Hawk finds Burke the pawn in a conspiracy involving two rogue cops and a grisly string of sex crimes. Read preview > Genre: Mystery

Andrew Vachss’s Best Books

Andrew Vachss Review Website Bibliography Rankings