Synopsis:
"Baby Boy Burke" it says on his birth certificate - Father Unknown. Raised in a series of foster homes, orphanages and "reform" schools, and viciously abused in each. Two prison terms and a lifetime later, Burke is still an outlaw: an urban survivalist who doesn't exist on paper, working the jagged edges of the criminal underworld. He's a man for hire, but you have to earn the right to trust him. The dark heart of six previous novels by Andrew Vachss - Flood, Strega, Blue Belle, Hard Candy, Blossom and Sacrifice - Burke's earned the title "lord of the asphalt jungle" (Washington Post). And now, after a hiatus of three years, he's back.
Still mourning the death of a child whose life he took instead of saved, Burke feels the pull of the Zero - the abyss that lies beyond death. Alone with his sorrow, he's been quiet for a long time when he gets the phone call. It's from a kid named Randy claiming to be the son of a woman Burke once knew, and still owes. The kid's plush Connecticut suburb has been hit with a rash of inexplicable teenage "suicides." He's sure he could be next and he wants a bodyguard. Burke's no professional bullet-catcher, but he goes along for two reasons: Randy's mother did save him a prison stretch years ago. And the kid's neighborhood is lousy with cash.
Lousy with other things too. Burke quickly discovers that the picture-perfect community hides the nerve center of an intense erotic underground where S&M sex is sold, traded...and recorded. As Burke moves down the pipeline to where the cluster suicides began, he finds himself in wealthy homes where the term "emotional abuse" takes euphemism to new heights - and depths.
And when a beautiful dominatrix with an ugly secret introduces him to a hideous new version of "legal" kiddie porn, Burke's rage drags him back from the Zero's edge and into a shadowy war with barely visible, shape-shifting enemies.
Consumed by grave-dancing with his own demons, Burke is quickly cornered. But his trappers are about to discover exactly what kind of quarry they've got...
Reviews:
In his seventh outing, Burke, Vachss's flinty ex-con and relentless crusader for abused kids last featured in Sacrifice , is still reeling after having killed a kid in a previous case gone sour. Here, he leaves his underground detective network headquartered in Manhattan's Chinatown for a rarified Connecticut suburb shaken by a series of teen suicides. Burke is hired to protect Randy, a listless high school grad whose absent, jet-setting mother did a favor for Burke years ago when she was a cocktail waitress in London and he a clandestine government soldier en route to Biafra. Still haunted by his experience in the African jungle and his encounter there with the suicidal tug of the abyss--the eponymous "zero"--Burke plunges into his plush surroundings with the edgy vindictiveness of a cold-war mercenary, uncovering a ring of blackmail and surveillance, a sinister pattern of psychiatric experimentation based at a local hospital and a sadomasochistic club frequented by twin sisters named Charm and Fancy. Vachss's seething, macho tale of upper-crust corruption is somewhat contrived and takes a gratuitously nasty slant toward its female characters.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
After an absence in Vachss's last novel Shella (1993), Burke--the PI hero of all the others--returns for this, Vachss's eighth. Burke's been doing some general snooping--checking up on cheating spouses, etc.--when he gets a call from Randy, a teenager from a wealthy Connecticut neighborhood whose friends are all committing suicide. He has a feeling his life is in danger--and remembers that his mother (Cherry, who saved Burke's neck long ago when he was a freedom-fighter in Biafra) once told him to contact Burke if he ever felt endangered. Burke moves into Randy's house for an extended investigation of the area--and this leads him to Cherry's friend, Fancy, a potentially dangerous vixen whose trust Burke casually earns through a mixture of sexual role-playing and a very careful search into her past. What follows is a plot (that's possibly more intricate than it needs to be) about a porn-film ring and a wealthy dominatrix/sociopath- -but Vachss is so sure-footed on psychological terrain, especially that of the sexually abused, that his plot-cramming secondary stories are all captivating sidelines. He takes Burke's tough-guy status to excessive limits, investing him with nearly superhuman powers of strength, libido, and intellect. But Burke also has a maudlin side--part of his tough-love routine is to spill lines like ``The night didn't have a chance against the kid's smile.'' Joined by a cast readers will recognize from Vachss's previous work, including West Indian Clarence and the Prof, Burke ends up meting out justice according to his prison- honed bullshit detector: He helps all those who have a shred of goodness in them, and he helps destroy the irredeemably evil. Burke's return is welcome--his superstud act may be extreme here, but he's one of the most fascinating male characters in crime fiction; and as usual, Vachss controls his narrative, cut up into bullet-sized chapters, with admirable precision. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Here is yet another hard-core novel in the author's series of fictional battles against child abuse amidst sleaze, slime, and the nearly surreal. Burke, who was last seen in Sacrifice (Knopf, 1991), is now confronted with young adult suicides and sexual blackmail in an affluent Connecticut suburb. Hired to watch the young son of a former lover, Burke is drawn into a bizarre situation populated by characters almost as strange as his friends. The suicides and the sadomasochistic sex, which are weirdly connected, force Burke to enlist his usual cohorts. Fans will want this crisply written work, but those not familiar with the bizarre characters who make up Burke's circle may be confused. Purchase where the series is popular.
Robert H. Donahugh, formerly with Youngstown & Mahoning Cty. P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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