Flood by Andrew Vachss
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Remember when downtown Manhattan was all strip clubs and porn stores? I do, barely, and it's a good thing, really, because otherwise I wouldn't believe the city described in this book wasn't a complete fabrication. And really, that's the best thing about this book. New York circa the early 1980s really comes alive on these pages as the main character wanders about searching for a child molester.
In case it's not apparent from the first paragraph, this book is grim. The main character, Burke, is incredibly paranoid and this is emphasized over and over again in the descriptions of what he does, how he's equipped his apartment and car, and how he's trained his dog. I understand that Burke is a damaged individual and that he represents abuse survivors and their ongoing trauma, but there's so much emphasis on this character's paranoia and how it dominates his life, that it almost hides the fact that there's not much story. Seriously, once Burke gets serious about finding the bad guy, it takes like 50 pages... But then it feels too easy. There's no tension in the final act, just a splash of action and then an extended epilogue to wrap up some loose ends. When I finished, I wasn't quite sure why I had bothered.
It's not that the novel is bad, exactly. The characters are pretty good. Burke is actually really funny, and Silent Max is more that worthy of standing along side Hawk and Joe Pike as stoic partners to the indomitable private eye. But I can't really recommend it, either. For a somewhat similar concept, executed in a far superior manner, check out "Closing Time" by Jim Fusilli, instead.
View all my reviews
