Only Child / Andrew Vachss

Only Child

category: crime, author:

Andrew Vachss

book 14 of Burke
original copyright 2002

read in February 2012

Agamedes' opinion: 7 out of 10: well worth reading

According to my local library, this book is "fantasy"... Hmmm... Though I must admit, it took a while for me to decide.

Is this book over the top? Or is it so far over that it has slipped into fantasy...

No, this is "crime". Gritty, underbelly, modern-day, crime.

I don't have a label for "crime" so I have labelled this review as action and other. Neither is correct. It's just easier than starting a new label :-)

"Burke", the hero, is a tough-as-nails rough diamond. Earns his money through crime -- except when distracted by his need to save children from the clutches of evil. Which is lightly phrased but the topic is treated very seriously.

Burke has many loyal friends. All extremes, almost caricatures. This had me confused, for several chapters. (Not that Vachss restricts the narrative flow by the use of chapters...)

I have never before read a "Burke" book. The characters are unfamiliar. The style is... choppy. Incomplete, jargonistic, abrupt. I was rather confused.

Is this book worth the effort? I wondered...

Last night I watched five minutes of a tv show called Luther. Tough-guy cop, plays outside the rulebook, talks in jargon. Standard bbc tv cop fare, in fact. The fact that he mumbled made the plot -- as far as I watched it -- incomprehensible. Sort of similar to Only Child...

Except that Only Child has no mumblers. One of the advantages of the written word! Still, I was confused.

Until, suddenly: the plot was revealed!

After some introductory settling-in of the characters, Vachss provides the key element of the plot. I do not know the characters, so I am confused rather than settled in. But suddenly...

The key conflict is revealed. I find myself sympathising with the victim. I begin to support the hero in his drive to solve the crime.

I am hooked!

This is a tough book. The good guys are willing to be violent, the bad guys are extremely violent. Yet the main villain turns out to be just a fool who set up a stupid situation which lead to a violent crime.

On the other hand, the violence is not overplayed. I dislike tv's gore-porn, where the point of the show is to describe -- in intimate detail -- the violence of the crime-of-the-week.

Yes, Only Child describes violence. In enough detail to shock but not enough detail to thrill the gore-porn addicts.

And real enough to make you think.

..o0o..

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