Dark Artist (Jackson Burke) by Sean Dexter

Jackson Burke isn't your run of the mill kind of private eye. In fact, he's not a PI, not a cop, not an ex-soldier. Instead, he's a man that lost his family and brutally avenged it, earning his hardboiled attitude by living through the pain. This unique character alone makes this novel worth your time.
Besides Burke there's a lot of great secondary characters hanging around as well, some nice, some not-so nice and some really mean bastards.
Burke offers his help to his former lover, a journalist being threatened by a killer who might be the Black Doodler, responsible for the death of 14 men in the seventies. Burke's agressive personality lands him in a  lot of trouble with the cops when he starts to investigate, making it a very personal and dangerous adventure for him. He has to face a great deal of pain, physical and emotional to unmask the Black Doodler.
The prose is rich and haunting, never getting in the way of the fast pacing of the story. It reads like a Lee Child novel that was ghost-written by James Lee Burke. An interesting tidbit is the fact there really was a Black Doodler and Sean Dexter did a great job researching the case.
If you like dark thrillers, you need this book.