Proving It

Andrew Vachss's unflinching examination of evil has won him wide acclaim and a faithful readership that relishes his quirky style and grim tableaux. In Proving It, culled from his two collections Born Bad and Everybody Pays, he surveys a desolate landscape of losers. An adolescent who is shunned by his peers exacts a terrible revenge; a teenage "escort" is hired for a devious plan and used as a human shield; a terminally ill woman hires a hit man to put her out of her misery; a young man discovers the shattering truth about the identity of his sister's rapist. These 29 stories have roots in the sensational headlines of today, but Vachss makes them his own.