Shella [Paperback]

Andrew Vachss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 23, 1994

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. Now Shella has vanished in a wilderness of strip clubs and peep shows, and Ghost is looking for her, guided by a killer's instinct and the recognition that can only exist between two people who have been damaged past the point of no return. The result is Andrew Vachss's most compelling work to date, the thriller reimagined as a bleak romance of the damned.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Vachss's seventh novel, an asassin searches for his partner in crime, a topless dancer who vanished three years ago.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Vachss's seventh novel--and his first not to feature ``outlaw'' p.i. Burke (Sacrifice, 1991, etc.). The author's new antihero inhabits the same mean streets as Burke, but on the shadow side: Known as ``John Smith'' or ``Ghost,'' he's an uneducated contract killer--and in a voice that's so stripped-down simple that it veers close to parody, he tells the compelling, violent tale of how he tracked down a long-lost girlfriend. John and Shella first meet in a bar where she strips: ``Like blind dogs, we heard the same whistle. Recognized each other in the dark.'' The two hook up to play the ``Badger game''--a dry-hustle extortion--until John's caught and sent to prison. There, he makes an example of one ``wolf'' (``I got my thumb in his eye. Pushed it through until I felt it go all wet and sticky'') in order to serve quiet time for the next three years. Released, he begins to search for Shella even as he picks up stripper/hooker Misty, a born victim who doubles as a springboard for Vachss's usual street-moralizing (Shella won't hook so she's superior to Misty, etc.). John-- revealed as a product of child abuse and Dickensian reform schools- -travels with Misty until a lead on Shella takes him alone to Chicago. There, he hooks up with a radical Native American who introduces him to a mysterious government operative, a computer genius who asks John to kill the head of the paramilitary group of white supremacists who murdered the operative's undercover agent. In exchange, the operative will find Shella. John poses as a redneck bigot, infiltrates the group's camp, and, after much danger and death, makes his kill. He's then directed to Shella--whose surprising fate closes the story with a punch to the heart. Despite the absurdly hard-boiled prose: a swift, savage, and unexpectedly moving exploration--somewhat reminiscent of Jim Thompson--of love among the swamp lizards. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 225 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Ed edition (August 23, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679756817
• ISBN-13: 978-0679756811
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #554,044 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Andrew Vachss has been a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a social-services caseworker, a labor organizer, and has directed a maximum-security prison for "aggressive-violent" youth. Now a lawyer in private practice, he represents children and youth exclusively. He is the author of numerous novels, including the Burke series, two collections of short stories, and a wide variety of other material including song lyrics, graphic novels, essays, and a "children's book for adults." His books have been translated into twenty languages, and his work has appeared in Parade, Antaeus, Esquire, Playboy, The New York Times, and many other forums. His books have been awarded the Grand Prix de Littérature Policiére, the Falcon Award, Deutschen Krimi Preis, Die Jury des Bochumer Krimi Archivs and the Raymond Chandler Award (per Giurìa a Noir in Festival, Courmayeur, Italy). Andrew Vachss' latest books include Heart Transplant (Dark Horse Books, October 2010), a collaboration with Frank Caruso that attempts to reset the cultural software as it pertains to bullying, and The Weight (Pantheon, November 2010), a crime novel. The dedicated Web site for Vachss and his work is vachss.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Love?, December 28, 2002

By 

"netchild" (Lubbock, TX. United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shella (Paperback)

Ghost promises to kill Shella's father. He tells her this. It is so romantic you weep when you read it. Vachss writes crisp. So sharp it cuts your mind. He creates characters with such depth they are bottomless. They are bottomless because the depths of human depravity is bottomless. You like Ghost by the end of the book. Hell, you like him at the beginning. To label him an antihero belittles his character, just as labeling him a murderer belittles his actions. It would be accurate but not accurate. He does kill. A lot. But there is no emotion in it. He is like a weapon. Neither truly good nor truly evil. Simply there. Waiting to have its sights locked and its trigger pulled. But Ghost, John, whatever his name, doesn't need anyone to justify his actions. He doesn't care about those things. All he cares about is Shella. He will go to hells without number to find her if necessary. And it is necessary. I don't know if one could call what he feels for Shella love. I don't know what it is. Love doesn't exist where he and Shella are. It never did and never will. But the closest word that describes it is love. Does love exist in hell? You'd have to ask Ghost. Perhaps that is what Vachss wants to tell a story about. Maybe he wants to show us what true love is like in true hell.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well written story about a bleak world., November 24, 2004

By 

BarkLessWagMore (USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Shella (Paperback)

Vachss writing is spare and brutally to the point (no Anne Rice syndrome here). The world he writes about is bleak, devasting and brutal. In Shella he delves into the world of a young boy abandoned at places where he lived with fear and the constant threat of abuse and grew up to be a cold-hearted, brutal killer for hire who is known as Ghost. Only Shella, a street toughened dancer, ever saw beneath the hard shell. They are separated when Ghost is thrown in jail and now that he's out his one goal is to find Shella.

This is an interesting look into the life of a killer. How cold-heartedly it happens out of necessity and survival. The book is bleak (have I said that already?) and disturbing. This was a difficult to put down book but it's not one I'd like to revisit due its complete sense of despair.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond Mans Heart of Darkness, July 28, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Shella (Paperback)

Shella was the first novel by Andrew Vachss I read. Later I learned he was a lawyer and a champion of abused children, when I was seeking the source of the intense hold this book held over me. Mr. Vachss writes with the intensity of a sledge hammer through a plate glass window. He dares you to turn away from the horrors of life that somewhere, deep past the place where nightmares fear to tread, you always knew were there. In his characters Ghost and Shella, we see the victims of an evil polite society many times refuses to believe exists violently transformed into a shadow of the evil which created them. If this is all there was, we'd have the makings of any Hollywood action film. But what kept me reading was, at the core of his main characters, there lies a frail vestige of humanity. Ghost's search for his old partner seems only a damaged attempt to re-establish the only semblance of a family he ever had, and he goes about it the only way he knows how.
I strongly recommend Shella to anyone interested in crime fiction, mystery novels, or horror, as it has elements of each, with this admonition: after you've read it, nothing will seem the same again