They meet in a no-name diner. A shadowy man hands Burke a CD dossier of
someone he wants found. Minutes later, as Burke watches from an alley,
his client is gunned down by a professional hunter-killer team. Burke
slips away, unsure if he's been spotted. Later, when he examines the
dossier, he discovers that the missing woman is Beryl Preston, a girl
he'd rescued from a brutal pimp twenty years earlier--when she was only
thirteen--and returned to her father. Now he has to find her again--not
only because she might be in danger, but also because he has to prove to
himself that his rescue mission hadn't been financed by a predator who
wanted his "property" returned. His search will force him to confront a
new kind of human ugliness and, finally, to practice the survivalist
triage that has marked--and cursed--his life since childhood. In Mask
Market, Burke the outlaw investigator finds himself searching for the
truth: not only about a girl named Beryl, but also about himself.
This is classic Burke: dark, dangerous, and galvanizing, from the
opening scene to the explosive climax.