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Flood (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by Andrew Vachss
Reader Reviews AN EXCEPTIONAL CRIME NOVEL ... perhaps not for everyone, August 12, 2003 Reviewer: Dexter James Woolrich from Wilton Junction, Iowa There seems to be an abundance of crime/mystery novels on the market these days which feature protagonists who never age, never change, and never react with anything even remotely resembling real emotions to the violent situations in which they find themselves. These "heroes" do, however, all seem to be blessed with the same late-night-talk-show-host type of cleverness, which they employ effusively as they move from one fairly predictable adventure to another. If you are a fan of such books you may have a problem with FLOOD and indeed with all of Andrew Vachss' books. In FLOOD, the first book in his long-running "Burke" series, Mr. Vachss creates for us a protagonist who not only ages and changes, but actually suffers from such human frailities as depression, self-doubt, and rage ... he even occasionally makes mistakes and then has to deal with the consequences of those errors. FLOOD follows Burke on his investigation of a child abduction/homicide. The horrors that Burke uncovers during this investigation are by and large common knowledge to the vast majority of the public today. However, when FLOOD was published in 1985 most of the public as well as the press were ignorant of the dangers confronting America's children ... the term "predatory pedophile" was not part of the nation's vocabulary and "Amber Alert" was not even an idea. As bleak as its subject matter is, there is considerable humor in FLOOD, but it tends to come at the reader from unexpected directions and is always tightly bound to the author's initimate knowledge of the unique environments through which his characters move. The language in FLOOD has the tone and feel of the great crime writing of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, yet remains quite modern and totally original at the same time. So, if you are looking for a crime novel that cuts significantly deeper than the epidermal layer of social/political/cultural issues, I can unequivocally recommend FLOOD or, for that matter, any of Andrew Vachss' books. On the other hand, if you are entertained by more middle-of-the-road crime fiction, where the violence is predictable and sanitized, the moral issues clearly delineated, and the heroes, while very glib and fashionably irreverent, always behave heroically, you certainly have plenty of other "mysteries" to choose from. --This text refers to the Digital edition
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