Welcome to Litsy!

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 Till�s 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 tragedy�it�s his one 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. Esau�s father was a widely feared beast who, it was commonly believed, killed his wife and used his own daughter as a substitute. In Esau�s own words, when your sister is your mother, too, you know you�re 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 �slow� mind but almost superhuman strength. Very early on, Esau learned that 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. 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 Esau�s 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.