Butcher's Boy

The Butcher's Boy is a suspense novel by the American writer Thomas Perry, published in 1982. It won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel.

Its protagonist is a professional killer whose real name is never given. Murder is a craft to him, and the name he is known by refers to his foster father, Eddie the Butcher, who raised him to follow in both of his own trades: killing people, and working as a butcher as a cover for it. When Eddie dies an unnatural death, his adopted son carries on with the work but leaves the butcher shop behind.

After he has dispatched a union member and a United States senator, the Butcher's Boy goes to Las Vegas to collect what he is owed, and rather than a payoff he finds himself on the wrong end of a murder contract. He sets about collecting the debt by terrorising the Mafia, which has been the source of his freelance work all along and is now his enemy.

The two hits have also drawn the attention of government specialists in organised crime. Among them is Elizabeth Waring, a young and unmarried Justice Department analyst who begins to see a pattern in what has happened. Three further novels about the same character followed.