Rating: 
Summary: A Completely new direction
Review: The most relevant statement I can make to you, potential reader is that this book represents an entirely new direction for the Burke series. While it is not perfect, and at times a bit pedantic, it was necessary, and should inspire new readers as well as revive Vachss fan base. Rejoice! The worst thing that could have happened to the series was allowing it to go stale. True to his character's well crafted natures, Vachss has proven he has enough testicular fortitude to take risk and not rely on formulaic contrivance, like so many popular authors have fallen prey too. Vachss Rocks.Without giving away the plot, Burke has a new face, new identity, new love and new frame of mind. He has gone through a physical and spiritual rebirth, and has chosen, through a mind numbing haze, to leave all that was familiar behind him. The device he finds to accomplish this is simple revenge for the death of his friend, Patsy the dog, but the deeper subtext, I feel, is that it was time for a change. This reinforces the essential loneliness of Burke's tragic life, the real life, that too many real people live. The life expectancy for anyone, character or other wise, involved in Burke's profession is drastically limited; It was just a matter of time before it all caught up to him. Burke, who is smarter, cannier, and colder than your average beast, knows this and chooses to beat the odds by refusing to play the game. He leaves and proves that New York is not the only playground he can become the master of. Vachss also gives us glimpses of the Russian Mafia, and other little known bits of intrigue that have resulted from the breakup of the soviet union. He gives us sympathetic characters, such as Gem, with an exotic past filled with abuse and hard core survival that reflects nicely off Burke's domestic brand of endurance. The other characters are still there, but they are memories now; people to reach out to. This is the first book in a long while where you get to see Burke at his paranoid best in new territory, seeking out new contacts and reintroducing some older ones as well. If you are a Vachss fan, you will be overjoyed at the flashback sequences in this book that sum up a plot that Vachss has woven through the last four. Figure it out and you will be thrilled. 'Nuff said. Something else sure to please is the ending. It's unlike any of the other books, and just as unexpected. It helps to open an entirely new chapter on Burke, while closing an older one at the same time. You'll love it. However, as a prior reviewer wrote, you might have to read it a time or two before the whole sequence of events sinks in - just like most of this book. Wouldn't Christopher Walken make a cool Burke in a movie??? What do you think??
Rating: 
Summary: Burke, a new man?
Review: The opening finds Burke as a bag man in a ransom exchange which goes all wrong. Burke ends up not only fighting for his life but his very essence. Vachss always takes us for a dark ride but in this novel the horsepower is gone. Although we're introduced to new characters and new settings, the grit just isn't there. The ending left me wondering "what happened to the Burke we all love?"
Rating:
Summary: Not Bad
Review: This is the first Burke novel I've read. I picked it up because it was listed as being about the prevention of child abuse, which is near and dear to my heart. I found it different from my usual reading (Kellerman, for example), but liked it just the same. I got lost frequently but fell in love with Burke, despite his taste for blood. I wish the book had been a bit more about children, though I enjoyed discovering how Burke survived his childhood. I'm just trying to remember if he has a first name....
Rating:
Summary: Uneven, but any Burke novel is a treat
Review: This is the twelfth Burke novel by my reckoning - "Pain Management" is the thirteenth - and it's a little different. While some readers may find that hard to accept, it is implicit in Andrew Vachss' style of merciless realism. Without giving too much away, Burke's elaborate defences finally let him down as he accepts one job too many. It spells the end of his life in New York, and very nearly the end of his life period. Things drifted a little out of focus for me as Burke sets out to track down those responsible, winding up in Portland, Oregon with a new identity and a new girlfriend. But then the momentum builds again, relentlessly, to an elegantly understated climax. On the way, we get some more flashes of Burke's early life when he and Wesley befriended a saintly boy with a talent governments would kill to lay their hands on. And pay a flying visit to a place that is almost literally out of this world.
Vachss' style can't be everyone's favourite, or he would be top of the best-seller lists. But I for one rate his books as one of the things that make life worth living.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but same ol same ol.
Review: This is who knows what number in the Burke series. Although each book is a self-contained mystery, you're really best reading the earlier books first to get a handle on the characters and the flashbacks that occur.
But by this book, things seem a little tedious. Burke spends too much time brooding, and thinking. Yeah we get, bad stuff happened to you, bad stuff happens to other people. You're tortured, you want to hurt others. We get it. Move on already.
The action is pretty slow in this book too, after the inital chapter book spends about a third of the book just 'laying low' and another third slowly tracking down those who hurt him. (read: a lot of waiting, and following. yawn)
Still the character of Burke and his relentless pursuit of those who hurt and prey on children is admirable, even if his methods are usually not. (Although you have to wonder if those people get what they deserve.)
Rating:
Summary: Vachss is back
Review: This one is one of the better burke novels. Vachss did have the tendency to focus more on his message than on the action in his last burke novels and somehow we had read it all before. Now, Burke is presumed dead and has to reinvent himself, becoming more a character like "The Shadow". We learn more about Burke's past and get to meet in "Seawulf" fashion Lune, another charakter from his non-childhood. Comparing this novel to the earlier Burkes I found that the series becomes more and more a "Criminal Fantasy", less authentic, less real. More like James Bond, with total disregard to character motivation, logical settings and logical conclusions (eg. Burke is in hospital for months, fakes amnesia and is frequently visited by the police who tell him that they know who he is - and he never asks them to tell him something about himself; He visits Lune in a Reservation far off any road. The only access is a path he has to walk on for hours - getting there it's ultra modern radar station with 30-40 people working there. I wonder how they are supplied and how this thing got there in the first place; It is never really explained how Lune solves the puzzle, he just does). This disregard for reality left me unsatisfied with reading the novel, because with putting the plot into fantasy land he propels the crimes commited also into "un"-reality, which is a shame as it contradicts the message of the books.
Rating: 
Summary: Revenge. Plain and simple.
Review: This was my favorite Burke novel in quite awhile. Vachss has gone back and stripped the character down to bare bones and, although Pansy had to be lost to acheive this, I think it truly marks a new era in Vachss' series. This is one ofd the best revenge novels I've read, and it makes me think that maybe Vachss read some of Richard Stark's parker novels before writing this one. There aren't any solid similarities, Vachss is his own man, but the overall theme of revenge, and violence without remorse on the part of Burke, really ring true to what Stark was doing back in the '60's with his parker novels. If you've never read a Burke novel, this might be the place to start. It's a new beginning, and Vachss does give some backstory, so I don't think a new reader would get lost at all. Hands down, i love this book and can't wait for the release of PAIN MANAGEMENT in September 2001. Alright!
Rating:
Summary: Called Fiction But Closer To Reality
Review: Vachss has done it again. Obviously no surprise to his readers. However as much as we might like to think we are simply reading fiction, let me tell you from personal experience there is way more reality here than meets the eye. i came to Vachss right after my book, which is non-fiction and tells the saga of the dark world of kids caught up in NYC street life was published . (Times Square Rabbi-Finding the Hope In Lost Kid's Lives -Hazelden) The similiarites to my book and my decade of work in the violent world of Times Square and the other boroughs of New York and all of his books is stunning and a source of great comfort to my life on the edge. I highly recommend Dead and Gone and every other book he has written
Rating:
Summary: ALMOST AS GOOD AS BLUE BELLE
Review: VACHSS IS EXCELLENCE - SOME OF HIS BOOKS ARE MORE DISTURBING THAN OTHERS AND THIS IS ONE OF THEM. BURKE IS A CHARACTER OF A LIFETIME. WITH BURKE , VACHSS HAS ENSURED HIS PLACE IN CONTEMPORARY MYSTERY WRITING AND CAN REST ASSURED THAT HE WILL KEEP MAKING MONEY FOR HIS TRUE PASSION IN LIFE, HELPING CHILDREN.
Rating:
Summary: ALMOST AS GOOD AS BLUE BELLE
Review: VACHSS IS EXCELLENCE - SOME OF HIS BOOKS ARE MORE DISTURBING THAN OTHERS AND THIS IS ONE OF THEM. BURKE IS A CHARACTER OF A LIFETIME. WITH BURKE , VACHSS HAS ENSURED HIS PLACE IN CONTEMPORARY MYSTERY WRITING AND CAN REST ASSURED THAT HE WILL KEEP MAKING MONEY FOR HIS TRUE PASSION IN LIFE, HELPING CHILDREN.
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