Burke books in order

Reading order

The Burke series is Andrew Vachss’s signature work, eighteen novels published between 1985 and 2008. The protagonist, Burke, is a career criminal who grew up in foster care and state institutions. He has no official identity, no real name on record, and works as an unlicensed investigator in New York City. His cases focus on crimes against children, and his methods are brutal and direct. The series begins with Flood, where Burke teams up with a martial artist to hunt down a child molester, and that mission statement holds across every book that follows.

Burke’s world is populated by a tight-knit crew of outcasts who form his surrogate family. There is Max the Silent, a deaf-mute Mongolian martial arts master; the Mole, an electronics genius who lives underground; and Michelle, a transgender woman who runs street-level intelligence. Together, they work outside every legal system, taking on predators that the courts and police either miss or ignore. Vachss drew heavily on his experience as a child protection attorney, and the criminal schemes in these books are rooted in how exploitation actually works.

The series should be read in publication order, as Burke’s relationships and circumstances evolve from book to book. Early entries like Strega and Blue Belle establish the world and the cast, while later novels like Down Here and Terminal deal with the consequences of Burke’s long war. Another Life, the final book, brings the series to a close. Readers who appreciate hard-boiled crime fiction with a genuine moral purpose will find the Burke series unlike anything else in the genre.