Safe House: A Burke Novel - Hardcover

Vachss, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375400842 ISBN 13: 9780375400841

Publisher: Knopf, 1998

Synopsis

The new novel from Andrew Vachss puts Burke 'hard-core career criminal and man-for-hire' up against a new breed of predator: stalkers. Some obsessed, some deranged, all dangerous.

Burke's old prison pal Hercules, hired by a shadowy network that runs a safehouse for stalking victims, botched the job, and one of the stalkers is dead. To save his partner, Burke has to penetrate the network, and he makes a deal with the boss, Crystal Beth, a woman as obsessed as the stalkers. But Crystal Beth has a stalker of her own, an extortionist who threatens to bring down her entire network unless she surrenders one of the women she's hiding.

When Burke learns that the extortionist might be government-issue, and that the stalker he's protecting is a member of a neo-Nazi cell with plans to make Oklahoma City look like a pipe bomb, his survivalist instincts go on full alert ("When there's too many loose threads, somebody always weaves them into a noose"). And when it comes down to making his own house and his family-of-choice safe, Burke turns lethal.

With blistering power, Safe House reminds us why Kirkus has called Burke "one of the most fascinating male characters in crime fiction."

About this title

About the Author

Andrew Vachss has been a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a social caseworker and a labor organizer, and has directed a maximum security prison for youthful offenders. Now a lawyer in private practice, he represents children and youths exclusively. He is the author of ten novels, a collection of short stories, three graphic series and Another Chance to Get It Right: A Children's Book for Adults. His work has appeared in Parade, Antaeus, the New York Times and numerous other forums. He lives in New York City.

From the Inside Flap

l from Andrew Vachss puts Burke 'hard-core career criminal and man-for-hire' up against a new breed of predator: stalkers. Some obsessed, some deranged, all dangerous.<br><br>Burke's old prison pal Hercules, hired by a shadowy network that runs a safehouse for stalking victims, botched the job, and one of the stalkers is dead. To save his partner, Burke has to penetrate the network, and he makes a deal with the boss, Crystal Beth, a woman as obsessed as the stalkers. But Crystal Beth has a stalker of her own, an extortionist who threatens to bring down her entire network unless she surrenders one of the women she's hiding.<br><br>When Burke learns that the extortionist might be government-issue, and that the stalker he's protecting is a member of a neo-Nazi cell with plans to make Oklahoma City look like a pipe bomb, his survivalist instincts go on full alert ("When there's too many loose threads, somebody always weaves them into a noose"). And when it comes down to making his ow

Reviews

Child-abuse specialist Burke expands his righteous field of operations--his one-man harrowing of our modern cityscape--to cover an Aryan supremacist network of terrorists. Not by design, of course. Burke and his ragtag band of urban avengers--Clarence, the Prof, the Mole, Max the Silent--start off much closer to their usual turf, on a self-ordained mission to take down domestic abusers who've turned into stalkers of their terrified women. Their eye-for-an-eye campaign leads them to Crystal Beth, who runs a shelter for women who have nowhere else to go. Vachss (False Allegations, 1996, etc.) establishes the safe house's credentials by admitting testimony from its desperate clients: the rape victim whose husband kept raping her ``because I owed him''; the S/M player whose latest playmate refused to quit the game; the cyber-chump who was seduced by a predator who disseminated a falsely heroic image of himself over the Internet; the porn star whose most reverential fan had turned into an obsessive erotomaniac. But no story is more heartrending than that of hugely pregnant Marla, whose white-supremacist husband Lothar Bucholtz (born Larry Bretton, a name he jettisoned because it sounded too Jewish) is waiting for her to deliver the son he's already named Gerhardt so that he can spirit him off to his coven of neo-Nazis. When Burke and Co. try to move against Lothar, they run up against a brick wall named Pryce, who tells them Lothar can't be touched. It doesn't take long for Burke to work out the reason why: Lothar is the designated informant who's going to bring down his pack of bombing buddies, and custody of Gerhardt, along with immunity for his earlier peccadilloes, is part of the price the US government has included in his severance package. A lesser crew of vigilantes would be stymied at this point, but the scheme Burke hatches to take Lothar down is a thing of beauty. Think of a lesser James Bond adventure, minus the high-tech gadgetry and the rules. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Herk, a member of ex-con Burke's "family" --a close-knit group of thieves, thugs, and other unlawful types--is set up for a shakedown that turns into a killing, and Burke's not about to let him go down for the crime. Burke tracks the hire back to a safe house for victims of stalking. One of the residents was being stalked by a neo-Nazi organizer, and Herk was hired to scare him off. But Herk hits the wrong guy, leaving Burke two goals: save Herk, and put the Nazi out of action. Vachss' Burke novels may be the darkest noir in the genre. Burke and his Fagin's army of social misfits have their hearts in the right place when they're helping the victims of stalkers and sexual deviants, but they have no mercy when dealing with the perpetrators of such acts. Their world is unrelentingly dark, virtually devoid of humor, and populated almost exclusively by victims and victimizers. Burke has a loyal cadre of readers who relish their sojourns into the darkness, and this new book won't disappoint. Wes Lukowsky

Vachss has always been one of the best and most creative authors of the thriller genre, with characters that leap off the page and story lines that threaten to break the reader's heart (e.g., Blue Belle, LJ 10/1/88). But the present work, though basically well crafted, has only brief flashes of Vachss's fine talent. Burke befriends those involved in a women's shelter and finds rogue government agents and a neo-Nazi group that plans to blow up federal buildings. He saves the day with the help of his friends: mute Max, Chinese terror "Mama," genius Mole, "Baby Sister" Michelle, and, of course, his beloved mastiff, Pansy. But what is lacking here is the bite of Vachss's earlier works, the toughness and brutality that have won him so many fans. Buy this for diehards.
-?Alice DiNizo, Raritan P.L.,
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375400842
• ISBN 13: 9780375400841
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 291