Publisher's Weekly
Burke is back with a vengeance, and with the full complement of underground irregulars who've populated his dozen or so previous noir adventures. For starters, there's Max the Silent and the Prof (short for both Professor and Prophet), Pepper, Mole and Michelle, street folks all, as well as the giant menacing rottweiler known as Bruiser, who protects the beautiful crime fighter Wolfe. No series offers a richer world of night people, or one as dark and brutal. For the Burke fan, plot becomes almost secondary to the immersion into Vachss's thrillingly seductive downtown Manhattan shadow land. But this installment has a terrific hook as well: Burke and company must come to the rescue when Wolfe, a righteous former prosecutor specializing in sex crimes, is framed for the attempted murder of one of the serial perps she once put away, a lowlife named John Anson Wychek. Vachss's prose is at its brittle best in his presentation of the case against the taciturn Wolfe, as well as Wychek's criminal past. At length, Burke learns that Wychek inexplicably has federal protection, and conceives an elaborate scam to snare him. Posing as reporter pal J.P. Hauser, Burke works his way into the life of Wychek's yuppie sister, Laura. This extended cat-and-mouse game (or perhaps Burke is falling in love?) has quiet depth as well as tension. Burke's an original, often imitated but never matched because Vachss keeps raising the bar. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Here, Vachss's antihero, Burke (Pain Management), returns from the "dead" to help a former colleague arrested for attempting to kill a suspected serial rapist. As Burke begins to pull in old favors and reveal his still-living status to select individuals, he discovers obvious holes in the prosecution's theory. The recent overturning of the alleged rapist's conviction makes all of his victims potential murder suspects. Old characters come back as Burke reminisces about his past and makes a surprising discovery about himself and his current life. Nothing particularly special here, but fans of Burke will want to read his latest exploits. For larger fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/03.]-Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Hard-boiled Burke (The Get-Away Man, 2003, etc.) gets all mushy over a damsel in distress. True, Eva Wolfe is no ordinary damsel. Once a high-profile, highly successful sex-crimes prosecutor, she got canned for refusing to go easy on a politically connected predator. In addition, she's the unrequited love of Burke's life, a lady who can reduce the vaunted scourge of Big Apple bottom-feeders to bleatings like this: "My love for Wolfe was a dead star. . . . But always, always there." Suddenly Wolfe is arrested and charged with the attempted murder of convicted serial rapist John Anson Wychek, who'd been set free on a technicality. So angered by this was Wolfe, her ill-wishers say, that she turned vigilante and pumped three bullets into him. But the bad don't die easily, and before lapsing into a coma, Wychek fingered Wolfe, whose efforts had sent him up. It's a Swiss cheese of a case, thinks Burke, unless something deeper and darker is involved. When he turns out to be right, it's time to summon the Burke Irregulars-Max the Silent, the Prof, and Mama-to dig and delve. If it's a job, says Mama pragmatically, show me the money. She doesn't see that the issue is love and the task to keep Wolfe from the slammer door. The narrative spine is a bit more collapsible than usual, but pace, tone, and atmospherics are all Vachss-grade.