The Butcher's Boy

The Butcher's Boy is American novelist Thomas Perry's first novel, published in 1982. The suspense novel won the 1983 Edgar Award for Best First Mystery Novel (American). The work has been reprinted several times, and was followed by two more "Butcher's Boy" novels in the series, Sleeping Dogs (1992) and The Informant (2011).

Plot

The Butcher's Boy features professional hitman Michael Schaeffer as its protagonist. Murder is a craft for the "Butcher's Boy," a reference to his foster father, "Eddie the Butcher," who raised him to follow in both of his two trades: the cold-blooded killer with a gimlet eye, and an actual butcher for a cover life. When Eddie dies an unnatural death, his adoptive son continues in his footsteps, but leaves the butcher shop behind. After dispatching an innocent union employee and a U.S. Senator, he arrives in Las Vegas, Nevada to pick up his fee. Instead of a payoff he finds himself on the wrong end of a murder contract. His reputation as a non pareil professional killer has always ensured he would be paid, even by men who think no more about murder than scratching an itch, men who nonetheless would not risk creating such an adept enemy. The story brings that scenario to life as the Butcher's Boy seeks to collect the debt by terrorizing the Mafia—lifelong source of his freelance jobs and current nemesis—into backing off.

The Butcher's Boy (folk song)

"The Butcher’s Boy" or "The Butcher Boy" (Laws P24, Roud 409) is an American folk song derived from traditional English ballads. Folklorists of the early 20th century considered it to be a conglomeration of several English broadside ballads, tracing its stanzas to "Sheffield Park", "The Squire's Daughter", "A Brisk Young Soldier", "A Brisk Young Sailor" and "Sweet William (The Sailor Boy)".

Steve Roud describes it as

In the song, a butcher’s apprentice abandons his lover, or is unfaithful toward her. The lover hangs herself and is discovered by her father. She leaves a suicide note, which prescribes that she be buried with a turtle dove placed upon her breast, to show the world she died for love. This narrative use of the turtle dove is derived from Old World symbolism; it is analogous to the folksong interment motif of a rose, briar, or lily growing out of the neighboring graves of deceased lovers. In this respect, "Butcher's Boy" is related to the ballads "Earl Brand", "Fair Margaret and Sweet William", "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet", "Barbara Allen", and "Lord Lovel".

Butcher

A butcher is a person who may slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat or do any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat, poultry, fish, and shellfish for sale in retail or wholesale food establishments. A butcher may be employed by supermarkets, grocery stores, butcher shops and fish markets, slaughter house, or may be self-employed.

An ancient trade, whose duties may date back to the domestication of livestock, butchers formed guilds in England as far back as 1272. Today, many jurisdictions offer trade certifications for butchers. Some areas expect a three-year apprenticeship followed by the option of becoming a master butcher.

Duties

Butchery is a traditional line of work. In the industrialized world, slaughterhouses use butchers to slaughter the animals, performing one or a few of the steps repeatedly as specialists on a semiautomated disassembly line. The steps include stunning (rendering the animal incapacitated), exsanguination (severing the carotid or brachial arteries to facilitate blood removal), skinning (removing the hide or pelt) or scalding and dehairing (pork), evisceration (removing the viscera) and splitting (dividing the carcass in half longitudinally).

The Butcher (2006 film)

The Butcher is a 2006 horror film directed by Edward Gorsuch. It centers on a group of teenagers who discover a murderer living in the middle of nowhere after crashing their car.

Plot

6 college friends embark on a road trip to Las Vegas, and during a foolish and unfamiliar shortcut, become involved in a serious car accident in a small, unknown town. One of the girls in the vehicle dies, and is accompanied by a friend while the others go looking for help in the small town. The find an old house in the woods, which is inhabited by a family of psychopaths, who proceed to chase and hunt down the group of kids.

Cast

Reception

Butcher (disambiguation)

A butcher is a person who slaughters animals, dresses their flesh and sells their meat.

Butcher, The Butcher or Butchers may also refer to:

People

Epithet