In the Pulp Fiction category, I'm proud to select Andrew Vachss' Burke novels.
Burke is a career criminal who has some talent as an investigator, and ruthlessly extracts revenge on those who he feels has wronged the innocent.
Frequently, the stories deal with sexual abuse victims (as Burke himself is), something that Vachss has experience in dealing with as an attorney specializing in such cases (his wife is also a lawyer, and chief of the special victims bureau in Queens). Similarly Vachss is a very vocal and prominent defender of dogs that are often thought to be inherently violent, and uses them frequently in his writing as a metaphor for how a cruel upbringing can damage and define someone.
Vachss' work is passionate and visceral, at times exploring sleaze but never becoming sleazy. It doesn't always keep its head above water, but it always has a sense of which direction is up. My favorite of the series (at least those I've read, about 18 of the 22) is Down in the Zero. The final book in the series was released just a couple weeks ago, but I haven't had a chance to pick it up yet.
