From Publishers Weekly
Drawing on his experiences as a lawyer specializing in child abuse cases, Vachss has gained a reputation in his five previous novels ( Hard Candy ; Sacrifice ) as a portrayer of deviant criminals with warped minds and bizarre modus operandi. The protagonist of his latest raw, scorching story is John, aka Ghost, a coolly efficient hit man and murderer who never uses a gun. Just released from a Florida prison, flinty John scours the nation in search of Shella, a topless dancer and dominatrix who was his partner in crime. When John was arrested three years earlier, Shella inexplicably vanished instead of hanging around to get him a lawyer. John is obsessed with finding the reason for her behavior so he can either punish Shella or forgive her. In Chicago, John meets Wolf, a Native American assassin who makes a deal: John must infiltrate a white-supremacist hate group and kill its leader; in return, Wolf's tribal cohorts will try to locate Shella. Vachss's chilling portrait of the white racist cult, whose members murder blacks, Jews and homosexuals, is the most effective part of a story that otherwise feels contrived. Readers may have trouble identifying with the twisted love affair between a laconic hit man and a dominatrix driven to a gruesome mission of revenge.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
From Kirkus Reviews
Vachss's seventh novel--and his first not to feature ``outlaw'' p.i. Burke (Sacrifice, 1991, etc.). The author's new antihero inhabits the same mean streets as Burke, but on the shadow side: Known as ``John Smith'' or ``Ghost,'' he's an uneducated contract killer--and in a voice that's so stripped-down simple that it veers close to parody, he tells the compelling, violent tale of how he tracked down a long-lost girlfriend. John and Shella first meet in a bar where she strips: ``Like blind dogs, we heard the same whistle. Recognized each other in the dark.'' The two hook up to play the ``Badger game''--a dry-hustle extortion--until John's caught and sent to prison. There, he makes an example of one ``wolf'' (``I got my thumb in his eye. Pushed it through until I felt it go all wet and sticky'') in order to serve quiet time for the next three years. Released, he begins to search for Shella even as he picks up stripper/hooker Misty, a born victim who doubles as a springboard for Vachss's usual street-moralizing (Shella won't hook so she's superior to Misty, etc.). John-- revealed as a product of child abuse and Dickensian reform schools- -travels with Misty until a lead on Shella takes him alone to Chicago. There, he hooks up with a radical Native American who introduces him to a mysterious government operative, a computer genius who asks John to kill the head of the paramilitary group of white supremacists who murdered the operative's undercover agent. In exchange, the operative will find Shella. John poses as a redneck bigot, infiltrates the group's camp, and, after much danger and death, makes his kill. He's then directed to Shella--whose surprising fate closes the story with a punch to the heart. Despite the absurdly hard-boiled prose: a swift, savage, and unexpectedly moving exploration--somewhat reminiscent of Jim Thompson--of love among the swamp lizards. --
Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
