Safe House: A Burke Novel [Paperback]

Andrew Vachss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 1999

In Burke, Vachss gave readers of crime fiction a hero they could believe in, an avenger whose sense of justice was forged behind bars and tempered on New York's meanest streets.  In this blistering new thriller, Burke is drawn into his ugliest case yet, one that involves an underground network of abused women and the sleekly ingenious stalkers who've marked them as their personal victims. 
   
   Burke's client is Crystal Beth, a beautiful outlaw with a tattoo on her face and a mission burned into her heart.  She is trying to shield one of her charges from a vengeful ex with fetishes for Nazism and torture. But the stalker has a protector, someone so informed, so ruthless, and so connected that he need only make a few phone calls to shut down Crystal Beth's operation for good—and Burke along with it.  Sinuous in its complexities, brutal in its momentum, Safe House is Burke at the edge of his nerve and cunning.  And it's Vachss at the peak of his form.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Safe House, the latest in Andrew Vachss's series of Burke novels, begins when Burke's "brother," Hercules, is paid to scare off a neo-nazi stalker and accidentally kills the wrong guy. Burke finds himself unwittingly drawn into a world of white supremacists, stalkers, and safe house networks. What ensues is an intense rush to cover Hercules' tracks and, at the same time, bring down a New York City white supremacy ring.

Safe House offers up Vachss's repertoire of repeat characters. The most fascinating are Burke's prison "family," the Prof, Max the silent, the Mole, Michelle, Clarence, Mama, and, of course, Burke himself, who is as hard-edged as ever. The family's willingness to help one another, even die for one another, is the emotional string that ties the books together. There are also two new female characters, Vyra, the affluent Jewish housewife and Crystal Beth, half Inuit, half Irish safe house madam. Though not as believable as their male counterparts, Vyra and Crystal Beth have powerful secrets of their own and add a soft, human element to the story.

Like other Vachss novels, Safe House embraces the dirty, grim life of the ex-con for hire. The most compelling aspect of Safe House is Vachss's no-holds-barred writing style. He spares nobody's feeling and minces no words in this rough, gritty and often painfully raw crime story. --Mara Friedman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Vachss has always been one of the best and most creative authors of the thriller genre, with characters that leap off the page and story lines that threaten to break the reader's heart (e.g., Blue Belle, LJ 10/1/88). But the present work, though basically well crafted, has only brief flashes of Vachss's fine talent. Burke befriends those involved in a women's shelter and finds rogue government agents and a neo-Nazi group that plans to blow up federal buildings. He saves the day with the help of his friends: mute Max, Chinese terror "Mama," genius Mole, "Baby Sister" Michelle, and, of course, his beloved mastiff, Pansy. But what is lacking here is the bite of Vachss's earlier works, the toughness and brutality that have won him so many fans. Buy this for diehards.
-?Alice DiNizo, Raritan P.L.,
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Ed edition (March 30, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375700749
• ISBN-13: 978-0375700743
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #93,202 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Dysfunctional Doc Savage has gotten old., May 1, 2003

By 

Christopher Wanko "-C" (Nutley, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Safe House: A Burke Novel (Paperback)

There's something mildly comforting about a new
Burke novel, because you should know what you're buying by now.
A twist on the hardboiled detective, an antihero with a heart
of pyrite, a hard exterior protecting a tough interior protecting
a broken inner child.

I've been in on the Burke novels since the first one, Flood,
was dropped in my lap. I kinda liked the half-assed detective
character, and I was willing to go along with Vachss' evolution
of the character and his environment, but this novel represents
a definitive "mining of the old".

It's just short of becoming a parody of itself, and I don't
like it. Vachss has stripped down his usual dialogue and
character interactions down to the bone; it's really as if he's
now writing these novels from a template, where he plugs in
the scenario and picks from the usual menu of plot devices.

Perhaps I'm simply tired of Burke's world. The Prof's rhyming
is truly awful now, and I no longer find it a simple thing to
suspend disbelief during most of the book. I think the only
character preserved from my broad brush happens to be Max,
and I suspect it's partly because he doesn't speak, but mostly,
because Vachss now treats him as a deus ex machina and as such,
he's mostly an object rather than a person.

<sigh> I know this is not good news for loyal readers. However,
I have to write 'em like I see 'em, and this world has run its
course. Perhaps Vachss will take some time off, re-examine
where Burke is and where should be, and come up with something
fresh. He needs it.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vachss again presents astonishing depth of observation, January 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Safe House: A Burke Novel (Hardcover)

In Safe House, Andrew Vachss again offers the reader the benefit of his astounding observational powers. This novel is a thrilling and suspenseful detective story that pits Vachss' ferocious and loyal Burke against white-supremacist gangsters who seek to bomb targets enough to start world war three. But the fierce plot is only the frosting on the cake. The true heart of this book is its unflinching report on the wrenching reality of domestic violence in America. And if you think those two themes have nothing to do with each other, buy this book right away. Once you have finished reading what Vachss has to tell, you will understand domestic violence for the form of terrorism it truly is. I read many new books this year, but this was the one I know will stay with me.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Vachss' urban paladin Burke confronts a crazed stalker., July 11, 1998

By 

David A. Ridgely (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Safe House: A Burke Novel (Hardcover)

If you take Andrew Vachss at his word, and I know no reason not to, he is an accidental author, a man whose passionate hatred of child abuse and the various adult pathologies by which it is perpetuated has led him (driven him?) to the serendipitous creation of art. Safe House, the eleventh Burke novel, continues Vachss' relentless exploration and exposure of the cyclical yet preventable evil of molestation. Each of the previous Burke novels has focused thematically on one or another manifestation of how, for lack of a better phrase, monsters are made. In Safe House, Vachss turns his attention to the stalker. Burke and his extended family-of-choice are called to help an old prison friend framed for the death of one such stalker. As a result, they are drawn into a web of extortion and mayhem surrounding a safe house for battered women run by Crystal Beth, a woman whose own will to survive in turn threatens Burke and those he loves. It is probably impossible to review a Burke novel without using the phrase "hard boiled," for Vachss without question writes the darkest, hardest suspense fiction of this generation. The staccato prose style, abrupt violence and (from a safe and comfortable middle class perspective) amoral attitude of Burke and his cohort create a palpable atmosphere of urban evil and human depravity. Yet Burke is a very moral man, at least within his own frame of reference, and there is a redemptive grace in his underground loyalties. If Vachss' agenda is ethically unambiguous (and it is), his characters are human beings, and that is the benchmark of art, whether intended or not. Safe House is perhaps not the strongest Burke novel, but it is well up to par. Of course, fans of Miss Marple and her ilk should probably give Vachss a pass altogether, while Burke's devotees could care less about reviewers' musings in any case. Anyone else seeking solid entertainment from an authentic voice in the noir tradition will be delighted, however, to discover Burke and his 'fami! ly' through Safe House. Andrew Vachss may be an attorney at law and a polemicist at heart; but whether he knows, or cares, he is also a writer of literature.