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Andrew Vachss, the master of hard-boiled fiction, returns with a deeply revealing new novel about an assassin whose love forced him to kill his own conscience.
Esau Till’s race is almost run. After pleading guilty to a series of homicides, he sits on death row, awaiting lethal injection. And writing his life story. But his memoir is no case study in tragedy—it’s his one last chance to protect his brother, Tory, after he’s gone. And, as too many have learned, when it comes to protecting his baby brother, Esau Till is a man without boundaries.
Esau’s father was a widely feared beast who, it was commonly believed, killed his wife and used his own daughter as a substitute. In Esau’s own words, when your sister is your mother, too, you know you’re not going to come out right. Not you, not your life, not nothing.
When the genetic cards were dealt, Esau drew a genius IQ but a horribly crippled body. His brother Tory drew a “slow” mind but almost superhuman strength. Very early on, Esau learned that the only way to guarantee his baby brother’s safety was to make himself indispensable to certain people. A self-taught explosives expert, he became the top assassin for two rival local mobs. When a third mob attempted to recruit his brother, Esau took them all out, unaware that one of them was an under-cover FBI agent.
Execution looms, but no prison can hold Esau’s mind. Or his love. As the State prepares to take his life, Esau plots going all-in on the last and most deadly hand he will ever play.
Andrew Vachss is a lawyer who represents children and youths exclusively. His many books include the Burke series and two collections of short stories. His novels have been translated into twenty languages, and his work has appeared in Parade, Antaeus, Esquire, Playboy, and The New York Times, among other publications.
The dedicated website for Andrew Vachss and his work is www.vachss.com.
Around here, even dying can be hard. Horribly hard. Only death itself comes easy. By easy, I mean frequent. Death happens so often that people regard it pretty much the same as the never-ending rain.
When life itself is hard, you have to be hard to live. Even a bitch will cull one of her own pups if she doesn't think he's going to be tough enough—she knows she's only got but so much milk, and there's none to waste.
Survival isn't some skill we learned—it's in all our genes. Nobody needed to be told to step aside when they saw the Beast coming. But not everyone stepped fast enough.
There's rock slides. Floods, too. Those are natural phenomena. You live here, you expect them. But just because a man's found under tons of rock, or floating in the river, doesn't mean his death was due to natural causes.
Folks drink a lot. Wives get beaten something fierce. Some of those wives can shoot pretty good. And some of their husbands never think it can happen to them, even when they're sleeping off a drunk.
There's supposed to be good and bad in everyone. Probably is. But here, it's the bad in you that's more often the most useful.
Like the difference between climate and weather. Most folks around here don't view a killing as good or bad—just something that happens, like a flood or a fire.
That's why a whole lot of bodies never get viewed at all.
For a man like me, this is a good part of the country to do my work. I take pride in the quality of my work, but I never deceive myself that every death at my hands is justified, never mind righteous or noble.
I never saw myself as ... much of anything, really. Just a crippled, cornered rat, trying to protect my little brother with whatever I can.
Anonymous
Posted May 15, 2013
Follows
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Posted May 15, 2013
Smiles a little. "Of course. Cuz thats who you are." Padded bck.
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Posted April 30, 2013
I love the Burke novels & have read most of them [I'm 66 & female] This one though not a Burke is one of my favorites.
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That’s How I Roll is an excellent book. Esau and Tory are brothers, born of an incestuous relationship between their father and sister. They are perfect compliments of each other. Tory has superhuman strength, but is mentally slow, while Esau has a genius IQ, but is confined to a wheelchair due to spina bifida. In an effort to protect his brother and ensure his future safety, Esau takes to building bombs and provides his services to rival mobs in the area. It’s only a matter of time until Esau finds himself on death row. It is from here that he reveals to the reader that he has one last trick he has up his sleeve.
This book packs a punch. I didn’t quite know how to feel about Esau most of the time because he’s indirectly killing many people just to protect his brother, but I still hoped he and his brother would come out on top. Then Esau lands himself in jail where he’s no longer going to be able to protect him anyway – at least not personally – so that was a little disappointing. I just think it’s a really cool idea for a story; I love that there’s no real hero and everyone has blood on their hands. The relationship between Esau and Tory’s father and sister is creepy, though. I had a hard time with that bit, but only because it’s so disgusting to imagine. Overall, the characters were really well-written and relatable, even though the circumstances are far from normal. That’s How I Roll is one of the better books that I’ve read in a while and I highly recommend it to anyone who’s into mystery/suspense novels. I wish that I had an actual copy of this book, so I could read it again right now.
Reviewed by Brittany for Book Sake.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 7, 2012
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Overview
Andrew Vachss, the master of hard-boiled fiction, returns with a deeply revealing new novel about an assassin whose love forced him to kill his own conscience.
Esau Till’s race is almost run. After pleading guilty to a series of homicides, he sits on death row, awaiting lethal injection. And writing his life story. But his memoir is no case study in tragedy—it’s his one last chance to protect his brother, Tory, after he’s gone. And, as too many have learned, when it comes to ...