DOWN IN THE ZERO

After an absence in Vachss's last novel Shella (1993), Burke—the PI hero of all the others—returns for this, Vachss's eighth. Burke's been doing some general snooping—checking up on cheating spouses, etc.—when he gets a call from Randy, a teenager from a wealthy Connecticut neighborhood whose friends are all committing suicide. He has a feeling his life is in danger—and remembers that his mother (Cherry, who saved Burke's neck long ago when he was a freedom-fighter in Biafra) once told him to contact Burke if he ever felt endangered. Burke moves into Randy's house for an extended investigation of the area—and this leads him to Cherry's friend, Fancy, a potentially dangerous vixen whose trust Burke casually earns through a mixture of sexual role-playing and a very careful search into her past. What follows is a plot (that's possibly more intricate than it needs to be) about a porn-film ring and a wealthy dominatrix/sociopath- -but Vachss is so sure-footed on psychological terrain, especially that of the sexually abused, that his plot-cramming secondary stories are all captivating sidelines. He takes Burke's tough-guy status to excessive limits, investing him with nearly superhuman powers of strength, libido, and intellect. But Burke also has a maudlin side—part of his tough-love routine is to spill lines like ``The night didn't have a chance against the kid's smile.'' Joined by a cast readers will recognize from Vachss's previous work, including West Indian Clarence and the Prof, Burke ends up meting out justice according to his prison- honed bullshit detector: He helps all those who have a shred of goodness in them, and he helps destroy the irredeemably evil. Burke's return is welcome—his superstud act may be extreme here, but he's one of the most fascinating male characters in crime fiction; and as usual, Vachss controls his narrative, cut up into bullet-sized chapters, with admirable precision.