Customer Reviews

Gruelling, bitter thriller. Rewarding for Burke fans only - By: Hooligween, 27 Dec 2007
If you have read followed the earlier misadventures of Vachss' antihero, Burke, then you'll know what to expect with this latest installment & you'll get a buzz out of joining Burke on his latest nasty escapadein the land of city shadows.
If you haven't read any earlier Burke books then this is no the place to start. Go back & find the earliest ones, when Burke was an unofficial PI working from a hidden office, when he surfed the underworld & when the plot drove more of the actionin each novel. These days, a Burke book is like a role call of ghosts from the past; the dregs of Burke's appalling upbringing at the hands of abusers within the childcare system; his sustained grief over the loss of his partner; his tight-knit family of misfits; his brutal hatred of the 'humans' who ruin children & lives. If you don't know the background then you'll drownin all the details, & you'll miss the subtle rewards of knowing that Max the Silent can kill as easily as he can place a bet on a good trotter, or that Mama's soup should never be ignored.

The last few Burke books have been pretty similar; by the time you've gone through all the namechecks & routines of a long-established series, there ain't so much room for plot. Nor does Andrew Vachss choose to develop a new storyline; the Burke books exist to remind us over & again that there are terrible people still doing terrible things, & Vachss is happy to let his characters re-tread the same old ground of previous epiosdes. Yet there's just enough development to keep our interest -- Burke's still listens to the blues but his tastes are changing; Wolfe may or may not give him another chance -- & Vachss' writing is still sharp enoughin places to make even a seasoned reader wince.
Don't read the Burke books if you're looking for a happy ending or a quick thrill. But give them a go if you want to take a lookin a mirror held up to modern society, & if you want to understand a complex group of misfit characters welded togetherin adversity. The writing is rapid & the pace is quick -- you may sometimes be confused by the slang or the unspoken messages, but the experience can become an addictive one.