To say I was disappointed would be be understatement. I have read everything else he wrote that I could find, and enjoyed most of it. But this is just dull.
There are no interesting new characters. Burke is involved with a client who is clearly set up to be Evil, but whose flaw is not so much shocking as pointless. Burke is searching for someone about whom there is no reason to care. It is set in Portland, not New York. Vachss cannot stop himself from writing a couple of page-and-a-half rants about drug policy that just lie there on the page like steamed gophers. The group named in the title espouses a cause about which we basically don’t care.
And there is hardly any sex.
I am worried that Vachss has Famous Author Syndrome, in which the author has come to believe that what he has to say is too important to bother about embedding it in interesting stories, so he just dumps it into a book and expects you to lap it up. It has happened with Stephen King and George Carlin, and I am afraid it may be happening with the author of Batman: The Ultimate Evil, and that would be a shame.
I haven’t read the novel but thanks for the heads-up that it’s out there; I’ll be looking for it.
Dead and Gone made it clear that Burke had left NY for Portland. That’s kind of like Doc Savage setting up shop in Mobile and after a dozen or so novels quite a shock, but I am anticipating reading about his new ‘family’ members and how Burke will again try to cloak himself in anonymity before going forth to battle the forces of hell.
I’ll check back when I’ve found a copy but IMO complaining that Vachss’s characters are EVIL or GOOD is to miss the point about his particular brand of luridly realized, claustrophobic noir.
On the other hand, he’s written bad ones before.
You can find Vachss’s very cool web site at The Zero.
I’ve been a Vachss fan for a long time, since the New York magazine profile around the time Strega came out, actually. Unfortunately, I haven’t kept up with the books as well as I should have and have hit and missed around the Burke series.
I recently finished Dead and Gone and thought it was okay, but that Vachss might have put himself into a corner. I haven’t read Pain Management yet - I’ve promised myself I’d read the other books first before buying the new one - but I’d not surprised it may not be up to snuff.
Vachss has to build an entirely new world for Burke, without Mama, Max, the Prof and the Mole, etc. It may take him a book or two to really get that rolling, assuming he’s able to.
At the end of Pain Management, Burke decides to move back to New York. So if Vachss meant to set up a whole other world for Burke, he has abandoned the idea.
Maybe the problem is that the case Burke is working on has nothing to do with children. Or almost nothing.
Gem, Burke’s self-appointed ‘wife’ from the previous novel, has very little to do in this one, and no genuine interaction with Burke at all.
I wish Vachss would do more with Batman. I liked The Ultimate Evil.