THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 15, 1995 TAG: 9511150076
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY GREGORY N. KROLCZYK
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
THERE ONCE was a man named Andrew Vachss, a crusading lawyer who wrote books centered around a character named Burke. Now this Burke was no ordinary man, and neither were these books.
Introduced nearly 10 years ago in Vachss' excellent first novel, ``Flood,'' Burke was something of a con artist, a street hustler who knew all the games, how to play, how to win. He lived life in the underside of the grimy morass of asphalt and concrete called New York City, haunting places that few ever see, and even fewer want to.
Over the next five years, fans were treated to an annual excursion into this world with Burke and his eccentric cadre of companions. And while the quality of tale told sometimes left a bit to be desired, the way these tales were told did not. Over that period, Vachss honed his writing style until his prose became akin to a straight razor lightly being drawn over a soft expanse of flesh.
Then in 1991's ``Sacrifice,'' Burke committed what was for him the ultimate blasphemy: He accidentally killed a kid. Things haven't been the same since.
``Footsteps of the Hawk'' (Alfred A. Knopf, 238 pp., $23) marks the second Burke book since that deed. This time out, Burke finds he's at the center of some unwanted attention. The beautiful Belinda, a cop, comes to Burke supposedly looking for help. Her boyfriend is serving time as a serial killer. But, according to Belinda, several of the murders he's accused of committing occurred after he was incarcerated. Furthermore, Belinda thinks a fellow officer is to blame for both the cover-up and the crimes - a well-known psycho cop named Morales.
Coincidentally, Burke would like nothing better than to see Morales go down for doing the crimes. Morales has been dogging Burke for years, just looking for a reason to lock him up or, even better, kill him. But Burke knows better than to swallow Belinda's all-too-convenient tale without looking at all of the possibilities. And the more he looks, the more likely it seems there is indeed a killer on the loose. He's just got to figure out who it is.
As was the case in Vachss' previous novel, ``Down in the Zero,'' the Burke we see in ``Footsteps of the Hawk'' is not the Burke of old but instead a poor imitation who seems to be merely going through the motions. A result of the aforementioned child killing? Partly, yes. Unfortunately, it's only partly. More to blame is a change in Vachss' writing style. In short, he's lost his edge. And, because all of the Burke books are written in the first person, as goes Vachss, so goes Burke.
But the new Burke is just the beginning. It was Vachss' razor-honed prose that made diving into the filth of humanity that is Burke's world seem almost a dangerously sensual experience. With that poetry gone, all that remains is plain ugly.
All is not lost, however. ``Footsteps of the Hawk'' does have a fairly decent story line that, though slow to start, ultimately moves along at a reasonable pace (though newcomers might have an occasional tough time of it because of the plot's reliance on and/or references to events that occurred in previous novels). And, in addition to the usual collection of oddballs and misfits, ``Footsteps of the Hawk'' finds a new character joining the in-ranks. But the bottom line here is still the fact that the novel lacks the edge that made Vachss and Burke so special.
There once was a man named Andrew Vachss, a crusading lawyer who wrote books centered around a hard-core character named Burke. Unfortunately, now this Burke is much more an ordinary man, and similarly so are Vachss' books. More's the pity. MEMO: Gregory N. Krolczyk is a writer who lives in Kill Devil Hills, N.C.
by CNB