Bestselling author Andrew Vachss wonders what the devotees of his inarguably adult hard-boiled crime fiction will think of his new book, Heart Transplant—created in partnership with illustrator Frank Caruso—for which he has taken his detective fiction and reconfigured it for a younger audience. Somewhere between graphic novel and picture book, Heart Transplant is aimed at the victims of bullies with the intent of helping the victims and their parents, family and friends deal with the situation effectively. The book will be published by Dark Horse this week.
“I think it’s certainly going to be a stone shock to people who are used to reading my books,” Vachss said. “Frank would tell me, considering the audience this book is aimed at, you’ve got to lose some of the language. I know that’s the way you write, he said, and I know that your books are adult only, but this isn’t. I said okay and went through and got it balanced out better.”
Heart Transplant is both a meditation on cultural views about bullies and the story of Sean, a kid whose tragic life takes a turn when he is taken in by a tough old guy named Pop following the murder of his mother.“All the ingredients are there for a bad, bad ending for everybody. A happy ending, I don’t know— but the correct ending, I’m absolutely sure of,” Vachss said.
For Heart Transplant Vachss reconfigured the typical paths in crime fiction, fashioning characters who choose different forks in the similar roads offered in detective novels. Wrong turns are made part of the past and characters like Pop and Sean move forward with the understanding that life is a series of choices. It’s not just Sean who gets a second chance, but his benefactor as well, and both as a result of their choices...
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John Seven @'Publishers Weekly'
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