Country: USA
Genre: Noir
Pages: 341
When I started being more serious about reading crime fiction, I've been told by several people that Andrew Vachss was the writer I should give my attention to. That he was the darkest, most relentless and brutal bastard you could find. For those who don't know who Vachss is, he's first and foremost a pro-bono lawyer for abused children. He is the fiercest defender of children. If he's in the portrait, any child abuser is in deep trouble. I picked up FLOOD, the first novel starting his trademark character Burke and I have been immediately told by his fans that I MIGHT not like it because he was still very green when he wrote this one, but that if I powered through it, the next chapters in the Burke series would only get better and better. You know me, I love this sort of contradicting warning. So I jumped into FLOOD head first and yeah, despite that it's obviously a flawed novel, Vachss does enough in its pages to keep my attention and leave me wanting more.
Burke is a darkened motherfucker. Everything he touches seems tainted by bad luck, violence and death. He's an unlicensed private investigator with a love for dog and a hatred for child abusers. One quiet day, he receives the visit of a short, plump and beautiful woman conveniently named Flood, who's looking for a man named Martin Howard Wilson. So we enter the world of Burke, who's a man with a plan in the battlezone that is New York. He has a network of informants, goons and very convenient friends, but also very convincing problems. While the novel takes a little while to lift off, you see Burke work to get 100$ to reimburse his bookmaker in case the horse he bet on would lose his race and deal with shady gunrunners who are after him to get his help. While Vachss paints a large portrait of his protagonist (which I thought to be quite refreshing), he never loses sight of the objective, finding Wilson for Flood because she wants to kill that child molesting pig with her bare hands.
While I was charmed by the novel as a whole, I found the character of Flood to be its biggest problem. She seems to be an import from a sexploitation film from the seventies. The killer beauty with the deadly assassin skills AND the noble purpose of avenging a child's horrible death on top of that? I mean c'mon. Oh and I forgot, she's also having this blooming sense of sexuality. She does katas naked and all*. She's more of a horny fantasy than a character. BUT, it's about the only annoying thing I could find to FLOOD (OK, it's kind of major, but still). When Burke has the center stage, you get some of the darkest stories coming out of him. My favorite being the story of how he got his old Plymouth car. It's going to send shivers down your spine and yet show you what kind of man Burke really is. Whatever he deals with or he touches, it's getting dirtier and darker. I love this kind of character and for that alone, I'll make sure to read STREGA, the second volume of the series.
There was also this weird, bubblegummy, almost comic-bookish feeling to FLOOD. But I liked it. Sometimes, reading the adventures of Burke, I felt like reading a super hero comic book. He has an expert martial artist friend (Max The Silent), a well-informed prostitute buddy (Michelle), a headquarters manager (Mama Wong) and last but not least, my favorite friend, the runaway kid with the almost omniscient hacking skills (The Mole). While Max and Michelle bothered me a bit, I found Mama and The Mole to be charming characters who illustrate very well Vachss' concept of "family of choice". Because when Vachss first started writing the Burke novels, he started calling them "trojan horses". They were tools to make Vachss' concepts weave their way into the collective consciousness. It's a bit obvious when you read FLOOD, but it was good and fresh enough for me to want more. It's a good, fun ride if you can forgive Vachss his clumsy use of a female character.
* Insert Ben rolling his eyes here