Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
When Burke, a yuppie-hating, horse-playing ex-con and private-eye outlaw, takes on the Times Square world of porn and murder, he finds himself facing a deadly karate expert and falling for a masochistic woman who's learning to deal with her past as an abused child. Although this ``often reads like parody of hardboiled detective novels,'' the ``abrupt climax leaves the heart pounding,'' noted PW. (Jan.)
Library Journal
Better order more than one copy of this thriller. Readers will be tearing the pages apart to find out what happens next as Vachss reaches new heights, and depths, in this third entry in his investigator Burke series. Again the hero's special morality draws him into a case involving the sleaziest sex factories in New York, darting from strip joints to massage parlors to a mysterious Ghost Van that kidnaps very young girls for kiddie-porn and snuff videos. Burke's unorthodox ``family'' of helpers are here, and new love interest Belle participates in some very steamy sex scenes. Violence laced with the bizarre, the super-cool, and wit, this novel certifies Vachss as a first-rate writer on crime, the underworld, and the pits of the human heart and soul. Robert H. Donahugh, Youngstown & Mahoning Cty. P.L.
Lena Calhoun & The Emotions
Hellish hymns from Amphetamine Heaven...These people are witty and they are grand, they do terrible things and make awful remarks. Ombine is an East Village prima donna, a hoarder of gossip. He is filthy, but he is funny....The characters of "a" represent the bizarre new class, untermenschen's prefigurations of the technological millenium.
-- The New York Review of Books
