"#1 Mystery of 2005" —Amazon.com

Reinventing Vachss
by Adam Dunn, originally published by Cobrapost News Features, January 6, 2006
"[With Two Trains Running,] Vachss is doing no less than taking aim at a collective villain far above pedophiles and maniacs—the government, a vast amorphous coercion machine whose very figurehead (the president) obviously doesn't have both hands on the wheel. And Vachss' remedy (or at least his last line of defense) against this is: Journalism." [read more]

Take Note: Interview with Andrew Vachss
with Patty Satalia, WPSU-FM, originally broadcast on November 20, 2005
"Investigative journalism is, in my view, all that protects American democracy, and I believe it to be at risk. I speak to audiences all the time, and when you speak to audiences of young people and you say, 'Name a famous journalist,' you get Jason Blair, you get Stephen Glass. And when you say to them, 'For crying out loud, why do you see these people as famous icons?,' [the answer you get is,] 'Well, they made movies about them, didn't they? I mean, they wrote books, didn't they? They're actual celebrities, aren't they?' If anybody else had so grossly betrayed the credo of their profession, you wouldn't think they'd be lionized. But journalism?" [listen here]

SlushPile.net: Andrew Vachss
by Thomas Scott McKenzie, originally posted at SlushPile.net, September 2, 2005
"It seems to me that he exposes you to the truth, that he puts you on the spot, that he interviews you, all of these things, so that he can affect some change in you. It is the reason he writes, after all." [read more]

Eye on Books: Two Trains Running
Interviewed by Bill Thompson, Eye on Books, August 2005
"A small, corrupt southern town is about to explode in violence, in this standalone Andrew Vachss mystery. It's 1959, and the strongman who owns the town is facing several threats, including the Mafia and an Irish mob." [listen here]

Review: Two Trains Running
Originally published at Bookreporter.com, August 2005
"But this latest effort offers something extra: an exploration of some disturbing truths— that history is written by the victors, that the victors are not necessarily the good guys, and that they get away with it because few people are willing to ask the tough questions." [read more]

The Roots of Evil
by Elizabeth M. Tamny, originally published in the Chicago Reader, July 8, 2005
"Andrew Vachss has always been able to make other writers look candy-assed... And it's not because he successfully manages to marry grim idealism to action-driven plots. It's because of the unflinching way he looks at evil." [read more]

Rewriting History
by Jay MacDonald, originally published in BookPage, July 2005
"If you look around in the headlines over the last year, look at how many cases from that era are all of a sudden being reopened: Emmett Till; Schwerner, Cheney and Goodman; there was a civil rights murder in Tallahassee, Florida, that's been reopened; there's one outside of Atlanta. What I really want to do with the book so badly is to have people take another look—a harder look—rather than just accept what they've been told." [read more]

Undercurrents: An Interview with Andrew Vachss
Rick Kleffel, KSUP-Radio, Santa Cruz, CA, June 30, 2005
"But make no mistake: Andrew Vachss is one of the most powerful voices of our generation." Audio interview available in MP3 and Real Audio formats. [read more]

With Eerie Timing, Revisiting Civil-Rights Killings
by Mark Rahner, originally published in the Seattle Times, June 23, 2005
"To me, this book is less a Trojan horse than it is my ode to journalism. It's my belief that journalism—specifically investigative journalism, but any journalism that informs—is what protects democracy." [read more]

Reading: Two Trains Running
by Judith Moore, originally published in the San Diego Reader, June 16, 2005
"I'm desperately trying to make the reader rethink the history that he or she's been taught. What you're doing is this: taking known historical fact, of which there's no dispute, and historical fact that should be known, but in fact, largely isn't, and you're blending them in a way that, if I did it right, you come up with a plausible explanation." [read more]

Review: Two Trains Running
by Dan Crouch, originally published in New Mystery Magazine, June 2005
"Vachss nods to other themes familiar in his canon … that families are made not born, forged by action and trust, not blood. That crime is often in the intent, not the deed. Part of the joy to regular readers of his work is seeing how those themes get worked in to his story. It's one of the things that make Andrew Vachss a singular writer in this genre. And it's just a small part of what makes Two Trains Running a singular reading experience." [read more]

Special Victims Unit
A Pulp Novelist Goes Literary
by Boris Kachka, originally published in New York Magazine, June 2005
"I worked years and years on this sucker. Everything else was laser shots, very hyperfocused. Here, I wanted to write a book that's not just a real fast river but has a very strong undercurrent. If you don't understand that, you're just a passenger on a raft." [read more]

Andrew Vachss, Two Trains Running
by Chet Williamson, originally published at Rambles.net, June 2005
"… works brilliantly on all of its many levels, and is one of those books that repays rereading. It's a new American classic—an intriguing story well-told, and a deeper rumination on how we got to where we are today." [read more]

"The Truth Hurts: Andrew Vachss Takes a Stab at History"
by Clayton Moore, originally published at Bookslut.com, June 2005.
"… an ambitious work that transcends genre to blend an unwritten history of 1950's America with sharp observations about how governments, crime and politics have shaped the country. It's literature all right—with a lot of corruption, desperation and bloodshed." [read more]

Andrew Vachss Catches Two Trains Running
Originally published in The Agony Column, June 2005
"… a complex, detailed historical thriller, a gritty noir that is written in micro-chapters to keep you pasted to your chair through the sweaty summer nights." [read more]

"Justice, Rage, Retribution & Vachss"
An Interview with Andrew Vachss
Originally published at Amazon.com, May 2005
"… can you be noble as you practice violence, extortion, blackmail, even mass murder? The struggle to be free from oppression is, in my mind, per se noble. But noble causes attract a wide range of participants, and many would fall far short of nobility." [read more]

"Vachss plows a field famously sowed by Dashiell Hammett and reaps his own kind of red harvest … Dark, violent, blood-drenched, page-turning."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"Like a stick of dynamite tossed into Hell—otherwise known as Locke City—Walker Dett moves in and the body-count mounts. The place is so corrupt it can make even Dett, the hired assassin, look like a tower of strength. Part crime novel, part blistering social commentary, Two Trains Running, is bound to be compared to Red Harvest. But add to this that it is a fable, and it is brilliant. Andrew Vachss stands in no writer's shadow. And he can toss a stick of dynamite farther and faster and straighter than most of us writing today."
—Martha Grimes, author of The Winds of Change

"The voice of Vachss: uncompromising, exciting, and fiercely original."
—George Pelecanos, author of Hard Revolution

Trade Paperback, 464 pages
Vintage, June 2006 / ISBN: 1400079381
for online purchase

Hard cover, 464 pages
Pantheon, June 2005 / ISBN: 1400043816