Trojan Horses
A Bomb Built in Hell
by Andrew Vachss
"... ticks with the inexorable deliberation of a bomb about to blow."
—Publishers Weekly
If you're looking for Andrew Vachss' first novel, A Bomb Built in Hell, then you're in the right place. Amazon.com recently serialized the novel, which had remained unpublished since it was written in 1973. (For the full background, read the news clips from CNN.com, The Oregonian, and the Author's Notes.)
That serial has run its course, but we're making the novel available for free for a limited time as a pdf file; click here to download. [Please note, you'll need Acrobat Reader™ available free at: Adobe Acrobat Reader™ - Download.] Consistent feedback throughout the recent tour for Dead and Gone convinced us that folks want A Bomb Built in Hell available through formats other than download. But, with all the possibilities out there, we need your input. Do you want to see the novel surface as a special "limited-edition," a standard hardcover, a paperback (trade or mass-market), an ebook ... or something completely different. Email your suggestions to lb@10ap.com. And if you like what you've read and want to sign up to receive notification of new Andrew Vachss works click here. |
 Read A Bomb Built in Hell |
A Bomb Built in Hell
Author's Notes
In 1972, I was represented by the John Schaffner Agency, largely on the strength of some short stories I had published in minor magazines.* My first full-length effort was, essentially, the journal I kept during my time in the infamous New York City Welfare Department from 1966 to 1969, ending when I left to enter the war zone inside a country calling itself Biafra.** That book was (as was all my work prior to Flood) considered unacceptable by the publishing establishment, on the grounds that there was no market for "this kind of material."
Victor Chapin, my tireless agent, who never lost faith in me, thought that my varied ground-zero experiences (including, by that time, not only [observing] the genocidal madness in Africa, but a stint as a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases; working as an organizer in Lake County, Indiana; running a center for urban migrants in Chicago; running a re-entry joint for ex-cons; and managing a maximum-security prison for violent youth) would lend themselves perfectly to a "hard-boiled" novel of the type that was so successful in the 1950s. A Bomb Built in Hell followed.
And (again) was unanimously rejected by publishers. They professed to love the writing, but felt the events depicted were considered a "political horror story" and not remotely realistic. The rejection letters make interesting reading today. Included in the "lack of realism" category were such things as Chinese youth gangs and the fall of Haiti. And, of course, the very idea of someone entering a high school with the intent of destroying every living person inside was just too ... ludicrous.
Naturally, the book was also "too" hard-boiled, "too" extreme, "too" spare and violent. I heard endlessly about how an anti-hero was acceptable, but Wesley was just "too" much.
Bomb was meant to be a Ph.D. thesis in criminology without the footnotes, exploring such areas as the connection between child abuse and crime, and the desperate need of unbonded, dangerous children to form "families of choice." Thus, the narrative is third-person, and the tone is flat and detached.
Victor, ever loyal, insisted that there was no dispute about my ability as a writer, but that I needed to add some intimacy to a book everyone called "dry ice." So ... Flood. Same themes, but first-person narrative, interior monologues, fleshed-out back story, (some) characters with whom the reader could identify (and even, presumably, like). Some sense of human connection. But the same themes.
Victor read the manuscript and told me I had finally done it ... we were winners. And then he died. Suddenly and unfairly.
Years later, after Flood came out, offers for Bomb magically appeared. Some from the same publishers who had rejected it the first time. I never took the offers, thinking of the original book as a "period piece." Later, at the suggestion of Knopf publisher (and my editor) Sonny Mehta, I cannibalized pieces of it—Bomb was Wesley's story, Flood was Burke's—for Hard Candy, and Wesley has remained a character in the series (despite being dead since Candy) ever since.
Rumors of the original book's existence have been present ever since an excerpt was published in 1988 in the HBJ series, A Matter of Crime, edited by Richard Layman.
The rumors are true. And how I wish some of the book's predictions had not proven to be so.
I dedicated Flood to Victor Chapin. And I dedicate this to him as well. It's been a long wait, old friend. I hope it reads as well from where you are now.
Andrew Vachss, Portland/New York, 2000
Notes
*One of which was later cannibalized into "Placebo," which, still later, came to anchor the three-act play, Replay; both were featured in my first short-story collection, Born Bad.
**Neither the country nor the name survived. Nigeria won. And the world has seen the result.
© 2000 Andrew Vachss. All rights reserved.
A BOMB BUILT IN HELL
Andrew Vachss. (www.vachss.com), free (169p)
Reviewed by Publishers Weekly, Sept 18, 2000
Vachss introduces hardened hit man Wesley in this stinging, disturbing prelude, written in 1973, to his popular Burke outlaw PI series. Serving time for killing a fellow criminal, Wesley meets Carmine Trentoni, who, despite serving a life sentence, remains connected to the outside and who takes Wesley under his wing. Upon leaving prison, Wesley locates Carmine's ally, Mr. Petraglia ("Pet"), and the pair soon are hired to "take out" whomever their clients choose. Exquisite planning, professional technique and sharp intuition guide Wesley and Pet through the murders of an Asian mobster, a competing hit man and a Haitian leader. Each death earns them hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the killers live in nearly complete obscurity in an old shirt factory in Brooklyn. Wesley isn't wholly satisfied with his lot, though, and sets out to make his mark on the world in an unforgettably dire fashion. In many ways, this novel provides a rough template for the Burke series, in which Wesley plays a major role. Vachss's prose, though not as stylized as the writing that would take the mystery world by storm in Flood, is as tight and succinct as Wesley's meticulously planned murders. Every Burke fan should read this novel, which ticks with the inexorable deliberation of a bomb about to blow.
© 2000 Cahners Business Information
