Two Trains Running (Paperback)

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Justice, Rage, Retribution & Vachss
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. Read our Amazon.com exclusive interview with Vachss.

Two Trains Running was selected by Amazon.com as their No. 1 Editors' Pick in Mystery & Thrillers for 2005.

Standalone Novels, Comics & Collections by Andrew Vachss

Shella	The Getaway Man	Everybody Pays: Stories
Born Bad: Collected Stories	Another Chance to Get It Right	Hard Looks: Adapted Stories

See all titles by Andrew Vachss.

The Burke Series

Flood	Strega	Blue Belle
Hard Candy	Blossom	Sacrifice

See the entire Burke series. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly
Vachss's latest, set in 1959, leaves recurring character Burke behind to explore the teeming, clannish, race-driven underside of American politics. The Southern town of Locke City, at the mountainous foot of the rust belt, has become the vice-driven fief of one Royal Beaumont, a wheelchair-bound "hillbilly" who indulges in casual incest and rules the town by force. When the New York mafia tries to cut in on the action, Beaumont fights back, determined to protect his stake—and the town's racial composition, especially with a stealthy local black militant cell gaining in strength. Michael Shalare's Irish mob arrives and proposes a truce on the grounds that once "our man" Kennedy gets in, the Italians will be "told" to leave, and racial as well as monetary order will be preserved. The book is broken by episodic bursts of dialogue with time-stamp headings ("1959 October 04 Sunday 20:46"); the dialogue itself doesn't feel differentiated enough from tough guy to tough guy, and smacks of faux periodisms. Some of what Greil Marcus called the "old, weird America" surfaces, but any scene with a woman in it yields awkward results. The pace is good and the plot is riveting, though the telescoped sociopolitics feel rigged from the start, as does a bloody climax.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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