Shella - Andrew H Vachss

From the acclaimed author of the Burke private-eye series (published in
Canongate Crime) comes an ambitious and chilling novel that shows what
evil is, and where it comes from. Shella is nothing less than a tour of
evil's spawning ground, conducted by one of its natural predators.
Called 'Ghost' because he is so non-descript as to be invisible, he
once travelled with a woman named Shella. Now Shella has vanished into
a wilderness of strip clubs and peep shows, and Ghost is looking for
her; for there exists between them a recognition that can only exist
between two people who have been damaged past the point of no return.
The result is Andrew Vachss' most compelling work to date, the thriller
re-imagined as a bleak romance of the damned.