Down in the Zero (Burke Series #7)

by Andrew Vachss

Overview

   Andrew Vachss has reinvented detective fiction for an age in which guilty secrets are obsolete and murder isn't even worth a news headline. And in the person of his haunted, hell-ridden private eye Burke, Vachss has given us a new kind of hero: a man inured to every evil except the kind that preys on children. 
   Now Burke is back, investigating an epidemic of apparent suicides among teenagers of a wealthy Connecticut suburb.  There he discovers a sinister connection between the anguish of the young and the activities of an elite sadomasochistic underground, for whom pan and its accompanying rituals are a source of pleasure—and power

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375719080
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/25/2001
Series:	Burke Series , #7
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	596,763
File size:	460 KB

About the Author

Andrew Vachss’s many books include the Burke novels and two previous collections of short stories. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and his work has appeared in Parade, Antaeus, Esquire, Playboy, and The New York Times, among other publications. He died in 2021.

Editorial Reviews

In his seventh outing, Burke, Vachss's flinty ex-con and relentless crusader for abused kids last featured in Sacrifice , is still reeling after having killed a kid in a previous case gone sour. Here, he leaves his underground detective network headquartered in Manhattan's Chinatown for a rarified Connecticut suburb shaken by a series of teen suicides. Burke is hired to protect Randy, a listless high school grad whose absent, jet-setting mother did a favor for Burke years ago when she was a cocktail waitress in London and he a clandestine government soldier en route to Biafra. Still haunted by his experience in the African jungle and his encounter there with the suicidal tug of the abyss--the eponymous ``zero''--Burke plunges into his plush surroundings with the edgy vindictiveness of a cold-war mercenary, uncovering a ring of blackmail and surveillance, a sinister pattern of psychiatric experimentation based at a local hospital and a sadomasochistic club frequented by twin sisters named Charm and Fancy. Vachss's seething, macho tale of upper-crust corruption is somewhat contrived and takes a gratuitously nasty slant toward its female characters. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Here is yet another hard-core novel in the author's series of fictional battles against child abuse amidst sleaze, slime, and the nearly surreal. Burke, who was last seen in Sacrifice (Knopf, 1991), is now confronted with young adult suicides and sexual blackmail in an affluent Connecticut suburb. Hired to watch the young son of a former lover, Burke is drawn into a bizarre situation populated by characters almost as strange as his friends. The suicides and the sadomasochistic sex, which are weirdly connected, force Burke to enlist his usual cohorts. Fans will want this crisply written work, but those not familiar with the bizarre characters who make up Burke's circle may be confused. Purchase where the series is popular.-Robert H. Donahugh, formerly with Youngstown & Mahoning Cty. P.L., Ohio

Library Journal

"Vachss is in the first rank of American crime writers."- Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Deliciously scummy... His bad guys are memorably heinous."-Washington Post Book World

"[Vachss's] short sharp sentences crackle with energy; his plots are satisfyingly elaborate; the narratives are beautifully paced, and the characters... are always pungently individual."- Chicago-Sun Times

"The characters and events are as sharply defined as if they were etched in steel. The prose is short and choppy, like the ticking of a time bomb."-Seattle Post-Intelligencer

From the Publisher