Burke’s newest 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 for her—so she can kill him with her bare hands.In this cauterizing thriller, Andrew Vachss’s renegade investigator teams up with a lethally gifted avenger to follow a child’s murderer through the catacombs … the catacombs of New York, where every alley is blind and the penthouses are as dangerous as the basements. Fearfully knowing, crackling with narrative tension, and written in prose as forceful as a hollow-point slug, Flood is Burke at his deadliest—and Vachss at the peak of his form.
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Andrew Vachss has penned a brilliant series that is part hard-boiled detective and part fantasy/superhero. The author might be surprised to hear this description, but I believe it’s accurate. In many ways, his novels anticipated the superhero/fantasy novels so popular today, with the added twist – or should I say, added degree of difficulty? – of …
I like the character, ex-con Burke, who goes places where the police cannot. He hates the child sex predators and uses a wide range of skills and friends to help him. The book really opened my eyes to the world of child abusers and sick minds.
I was in prison for 15 years. This book…this author changed my life. I am no longer incarcerated, I am graduating from the University of Washington, in the fall I begin law school. If you have ever lived a non-traditional life… If your childhood was one where survival was the only goal… If you have always been told that to heal you must …
Readable (I finished it) but really can’t recommend it.
Great book! A real page turner!
I stopped reading after three chapters; I could not relate to the two protagonists and, frankly, did not like.
I read this book several years ago and started this edition by accident. I was half way through the book before I realized I had read it but had captured my attention again so I finished it. Vachss make you believe Burke is real and actually lives in New York. This is a can’t miss.
Mr Vachss never disappoints his life’s work gives him an insight into the world about which he writes. His concept of family is on the money and he brings a rare passion to Burke’s stories.
Not for the faint of heart.
I love all the Burke novels they are very gritty. The characters are a strange family built from grave circumstances. They work on both sides of the law to save children from the most evil cases.
I was sorry I was reading it. Sketchy characters, unbelieveable action, really rather ridiculous. I knew the author’s reputation and was very disappointed.
Very dark (not my usual cup of tea) but brilliant and carefully plotted. A page turner even when you shudder at what you suspect is on the next page. Andrew Vachss is a master at this, and Burke is a smart anti-hero who has a bit of Robin Hood and just a bit of John Rain in him too. Raised by the state in a succession of orphanages and foster …