Review
โCrafty, strong-willed Esau combines courtly manners, deadly paybacks, and ruthless singularity of purpose in this chilling tour de force.โ
โ Publishers Weekly
"Born of a supremely abusive father and his own sister, Esau Till is trouble from day one โ a hired killer who ends up on death row. This book unfolds as Esau's effort to tell his life story in a bid to protect Tory after his own death. Vachss writes raw, eye-opening works that deserve our attention."
โLibrary Journal
PRAISE FOR ANDREW VACHSS:
โMany writers try to cover the same ground as Vachss. A handful are as good. None are better.โ
โ _People
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โWriting in a style so sleekly engineered that it purrs when you pop the hood, Vachss gives us such a smooth ride that itโs easy to forget someone is driving this thing.โ
โ _The New York Times Book Review
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โVachssโs stories . . . burn with righteous rage and transfer a degree of that rage to the reader.โ
โ _The Washington Post Book World
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โA contemporary master . . . Decidedly hard-boiled, his prose is lean, tough-edged, and brittle.โ
โ _The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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โVachssโs tough-guy writing style grabs you by the hair and jerks you to attention.โ
โ _Detroit Free Press
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โVachss writes hypnotically violent prose made up of equal parts broken concrete blocks and razor wire.โ
โ _Chicago Sun-Times
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Product Description
Andrew Vachss, the master of hard-boiled fiction, returns with a deeply revealing new novel about an assassin whose love forced him to kill his own conscience.
Esau Tillโs race is almost run. After pleading guilty to a series of homicides, he sits on death row, awaiting lethal injection. And writing his life story. But his memoir is no case study in tragedyโitโs his one last chance to protect his brother, Tory, after heโs gone. And, as too many have learned, when it comes to protecting his baby brother, Esau Till is a man without boundaries.
Esauโs father was a widely feared beast who, it was commonly believed, killed his wife and used his own daughter as a substitute. In Esauโs own words, when your sister is your mother, too, you know youโre not going to come out right. Not you, not your life, not nothing.
When the genetic cards were dealt, Esau drew a genius IQ but a horribly crippled body. His brother Tory drew a โslowโ mind but almost superhuman strength. Very early on, Esau learned that the only way to guarantee his baby brotherโs safety was to make himself indispensable to certain people. A self-taught explosives expert, he became the top assassin for two rival local mobs. When a third mob attempted to recruit his brother, Esau took them all out, unaware that one of them was an under-cover FBI agent.
Execution looms, but no prison can hold Esauโs mind. Or his love. As the State prepares to take his life, Esau plots going all-in on the last and most deadly hand he will ever play.