Only Child: A Burke Novel (Burke Novels) (Hardcover)

by Andrew Vachss (Author) "I'd been gone for years..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Long Island, The Brains of the Outfit (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Andrew Vachss's series hero, an outlaw vigilante named Burke, is on the trail of the man who murdered the teenage daughter of a Mafioso whose secret affairs with a black woman and a gay crime boss make Tony Soprano's sub rosa relationship with his psychiatrist seem inconsequential. More accustomed to committing crimes than investigating them, Burke comes out of retirement and reunites with his New York family, a group of criminals who join him in a clever ruse to unmask the killer. The circuitous trail eventually leads to an underground filmmaker whose disturbing brand of noir vérité was responsible for the girl's death; as usual, Burke metes out vengeance with a steady hand. As usual, Vachss turns in a suitably dark, violent thriller with a strong narrative drive and an explosive conclusion. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly
"Sherlock Holmes is dead," intones Giovanni, a New York Mafia boss who hires street criminal Burke-who's made a career of killing child murderers and molesters-to solve the murder of his illegitimate teenage daughter, Vonni. Indeed, the whole Vachss oeuvre (this is the 14th novel to feature the avenging angel Burke) is a reminder that Conan Doyle's fictional sleuth would be clueless in the violent, sordid world of today's hard-boiled mystery. Burke doesn't search for clues so much as extort them by combining street smarts, his formidable intelligence and a deeply rooted outrage at the victimization of the young. Burke's fans will be delighted that he's returned to his home turf-the gritty back streets of New York City-where he's welcomed into the bosom of his ragtag band of delinquent colleagues. The novel has a compelling plot line (like a police procedural without the police), but the narrative is far from seamless. There are a couple of false starts as Burke searches for something to occupy his time, and the references to earlier novels will probably baffle newcomers. More seriously, the elaborate ruse Burke executes to identify and trap the killer is barely credible. But the noirish prose (a man's eyes are "the color of old dimes") is a pleasure, and Burke is an antihero of the old school. Though it doesn't break new artistic ground for Vachss, the book is another harrowing glimpse of the urban underworld from an author who clearly knows his terrain and whose sympathy for the truly innocent-the children-is unstinting.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st ed/1st printing edition (October 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375414878
• ISBN-13: 978-0375414879
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #541,280 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #48 in

  Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Authors, A-Z > ( V ) > Vachss, Andrew

• This is item 14 in The Burke Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Guess who's back?, November 4, 2002

By	Belinda Kameron (West Coast, USA) - See all my reviews

In the mid 1800s, Gustave Flaubert described France as a place where "the banal, the facile, and the foolish are invariably applauded, adopted, and adored." Flaubert's lament is an equally apt condemnation of early 21st century life in America, or indeed, much of the modern "developed" world.

I have never written a book review before. I have never read a Burke novel before either. The convergence of the two firsts is no accident. I loved this book, but from reading the descriptions and professional reviews before getting my copy, I didn't necessarily expect to even *like* it.

I'm not a stranger to Andrew Vachss' writing, having enjoyed all the comics, short fiction, and full-length novel "Shella." And Vachss is well known as the author of the Burke series, so most fans are presumably already closely acquainted with the characters I just discovered in fall of 2002.

"Only Child" has been promoted by pros and fans alike as the book "we" have all been waiting for, the one that sees Burke return to his native New York. And if you've ever read even a single review of any Burke novel, or any article about Vachss for that matter, then you already know that Vachss, and Burke, are both the ultimate New Yorkers. One review of the books I've seen stated that New York City is actually the "predominate character" of the entire series. For those people who are "fans" of New York, this is bound to be a draw, but Vachss' and Burke's fans come from all over the world. If you're one of those people who hated "Dead and Gone" and "Pain Management," and couldn't wait for Burke to get back to his home turf, then you've probably already ordered "Only Child" and need no encouragement to give it a shot. If you are more like me - West Coast to the core, never been to New York, nor had any special desire to go there, met plenty of people *from* NY who pay homage to the Holy City, but would laugh in your face if you offered them a pre-paid one-way ticket and guaranteed job back to where they're from - then you might be a little more dubious about jumping into an established series at the "coming-home-after-an-enforced-absence" point.

If so, DON'T BE. Perhaps people familiar with and fond of New York see the city as a character, but if this is not the case, it's no kind of problem at all in my eyes. The themes Vachss deals with are international and timeless, and so are the characters. If you've never been closer to the east coast than El Centro, don't fear that you'll be left out. I think every single review I've read so far stresses the back-to-New-York angle, and the fact that Burke must "infiltrate the teenage subculture" of Long Island as pluses. The first drawing point initially made me worry that I'd be confused by endless local references, and the second I admit had me half expecting some kind of "Samurai Jack undercover at the rave" trick, but both worries proved so groundless that it was amazing. Yes, Burke is home, and if you're a NY native, you'll doubtless rejoice, but rather than a passel of location minutia, this fact is written in a way immediately comprehensible to anyone who's ever returned to *anything* that felt like coming home. Crossing the Triborough, crossing the Grapevine, crossing the threshold to anywhere one has missed from someplace else - what's the difference? When the writer is as good as Vachss, there isn't one.

I found (to my relief) the "teenage subculture" sections to be both believable *and* not entirely integral to the plot. I noticed things in this book I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere, and those are what truly impressed me. There's a totally excellent kid early on in the book that I fell in love with right off.If there's a god in this world, then Hugh (and BOO) will find a way to cross paths with Burke again. This kid is so real you've probably birthed or babysat him, and so cool that you were probably truly enriched by the experience! The part that impressed me the most is difficult to express without giving away too much, but it involves the book's villain (one of them at least). Someone I know was reading "Only Child" around the same time I was, and both of us were like "Hey -- did you think of..." and both immediately said the same acquaintance's name - it was honestly freaky. A certain number of us have probably met people a lot like Cyn and Rejji in childhood, probably a lot more of us as teenagers...but the really soul-tweaked specimens often make themselves known, in other guises, to the college-aged masses, of which I am a member. If you read certain portions of the "Only Child" dialogue, there would definitely be dozens at my own school, and thousands across the country, so sure they recognized an actual person from their own lives, that one can begin to understand the "Vachss is reading my mail" phenomenon.

To say any more would spoil the enjoyment of discovery, so I'll close by saying -- if I was pitching a screenplay, I'd probably describe this book as "Hannah Arendt meets Antonin Artaud"...and then throw in some crap about "...on a gritty urban landscape" to try to hook the reader, but this book is written for people too smart to get hooked, so I'll just say: Take a chance, buy this book, if you're anything like me you won't regret it. (If you're nothing at all like me, you might, but you're probably not sufficiently interesting for me to care, LOL.)

Great book. Buy it and see for yourself.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Burke's Back!, October 15, 2002

By	"alant_ny" (NEW YORK) - See all my reviews

Here's the thing. Vachss keeps turning out the most realistic bad guys ever. After every one of his books get released, there's a story in the news about the Feds busting a gang of bad guys (and bad girls) doing just what Vachss warned us about.

Again, the characters in Only Child are bound to turn up on tonight's news. In his quirky and serious style, Vachss sets Only Child on Long Island, a densely populated suburb of New York City. Its bad guys who prey upon the (mostly) sanguine suburbanites are exactly the kind of predators that your Mom warned you about.

This is not a novel ripped from the headlines, quite certainly, it's the other way around. Tomorrow's headlines will, once again, be written about the real people behind the fictionalized characters in this book.

Only Child is another Burke novel. If you think you're getting tired of yet another one, don't worry. It's fresh, (in Vachss' punishing kind of way) it's twisted, and the ending plays out like a novel written with a sense of fairness in a decidedly unfair world.

Vachss writes dialogue like every writer wishes he could. No matter what crime/noir/verité writer you've been hooked on before, you never really get hooked until you've read Vachss.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Better Than the Last, But still Flawed, January 22, 2004

By	Ann M Eadie (Jacksonville, Florida United States) - See all my reviews

Andrew Vachss lost the thread of his Burke books about five years ago. What he needs is a good editor again to tell him what's working and what isn't. I have to say, though, that he seemed to be getting back on track with this one, although there's about 80 pages of padding. I kept saying to myself, "Get to it, Vachhs, and stop babbling!" Finally I gave up and just couldn't finish. Still, I remain a fan of the man's work.