A Bomb Built in Hell

Before Burke, Andrew Vachss created Wesley, the ultimate ice-man. A Bomb Built in Hell is Wesley's story.

While doing time for manslaughter, Wesley meets prison boss Carmine Trentoni, an Old School gangster who no longer believes in the blood-oath he took years ago. Carmine's triple life sentence hasn't cut him off from all his outside sources-he has waited with the patience of stone for someone capable of absorbing his knowledge . . . and carrying out his sworn vengeance. Wesley emerges from prison as the perfect hit man: calculating, deadly, and ice-cold. He follows Carmine's instructions: locate "the last of us," one "Mr. Petraglia," then assassinate a Chinatown gang boss and a Mafia chief-both had overstepped their bounds. But then Wesley finds his own mission: As he begins to see the root of all he has learned to hate, he and a youth just out of reform school, known only as The Kid, begin to take out political targets. In a final burst of understanding, Wesley decides to leave The Kid behind. But not before he writes his own suicide note . . . in dynamite.