Shannon C.’s review of Flood (Burke Series, Book 1) by Andrew Vachss
Mystery fiction released by Vintage 10 Mar 98

I’m not sure that I would have picked up this book if I hadn’t seen a blog post about its author. I would provide a link, but blog posts run together in my head, and I don’t remember who it was. Anyway, Andrew Vachss is a serious bad-ass. The proceeds of his books, according to his wiki page go toward his law practice, where he defends children and youth. In real life, I am a social work major, and I figured if anyone was going to write compelling books about issues that are important to me, it would be someone like him. But when one of my good online friends confessed to being a Burke fangirl, I decided I had to see whether the badassery would translate into decent writing.

I suspect that a reader’s enjoyment of Burke will depend a lot on her politics and her squeamishness. Vachss has his opinions, and he doesn’t sugar-coat them, and not all of his opinions are easy to swallow. (Burke clearly dislikes social workers, for one thing, and he doesn’t seem to have a lot of love for middle-class white liberals, either.) And, good Lord, is this book violent.

There were a few places where I was reading with clenched teeth, just on the point of being squicked. But it all works for me. I didn’t feel any of the violence was gratuitous or inserted there just so that we could have a random violent scene. Burke’s world is a hard, cold place, and bad things happen, and it all serves its purpose.

Burke himself is a compelling character. He lives an underground life, hiding from normal everyday citizens because it’s easier that way. Stepping into Burke’s world leaves the reader, as it does Flood, the woman who finds Burke and asks him to find a man called the Cobra so she can kill him, either keeping up or being lost. I was able to keep up, though for the first bit of the book, I didn’t especially find Burke a likeable character. He was, however, compelling, and that goes a long way. I also found him to be an alpha male type I could certainly respect, even if I don’t always like him.

This isn’t a romance, and it’s not even so much a mystery as it is a look at some of the seedier places the world has to offer. But the characters aside from Burke, from the titular Flood to Max the Silent to Michelle, a transsexual prostitute, are all people I want to learn more about. I’m really glad I was pointed at this series, and if you like your mysteries with a bit of grit, this book definitely comes recommended.

Grade: B+

Summary from Amazon.com:
In Vachss’s acclaimed first novel, we are introduced to Burke, the avenging angel of abused children. Burke’s client is a woman named Flood, who has the face of an angel, the body of a high-priced stripper, and the skills of a professional executioner. She wants Burke to find a monster — so she can kill him with her bare hands. In this cauterizing thriller, Andrew Vachss’s renegade private eye teams up with a lethally gifted vigilante to follow a child’s murderer through the catacombs of New York, where every alley is a setup for a mugging and every tenement has something rotten in the basement. Fearfully knowing, buzzing with narrative tension, and written in prose as forceful as a hollow-point bullet, Flood is Burke at his deadliest — and Vachss at the peak of his form.
Read an excerpt.

Other books in the series:

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Coming 30 Dec 08: