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Blackjack (2012)

by Andrew Vachss(Favorite Author)

3.23 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0307949575 (ISBN13: 9780307949578)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Vintage

review 1: Continuing in my current mode of reading new authors to me, I gave this one a try.Bizarre.took me a bit to figure out where this one was going. Reminded me of a Predator movie. Epic evil-good vs evil.I was hooked in the first chapter, but still trying to figure out why he needed the last chapter.Lots of quality kills per minute. A couple of intriguing characters. Apparently it is book one in a series. Not sure I enjoyed it enough to continue on.Not sure what else to say.
review 2: **SPOILERS**Vachss' post-Burke writing has had its ups and downs so far. (Heck, his last several Burke novels were spotty.) Post-Burke, I loved HAIKU, I didn't love THE WEIGHT. Of course, all of his books burn with the same passionate flame -- deep-rooted empathy for the downtrodden a... morend the exploited -- and BLACKJACK is no different, though I hope that Cross and his gang are better served in future installments. Most notably, Vachss takes a turn for the supernatural in this one. He's skirted the boundaries of the fantastic before -- remember Wesley from the Burke series? -- but in BLACKJACK, the villain is ultimately evil itself. That's fine with me. He can write about anything with skill, but Cross and his gang still need some development, in this die-hard Vachss fan's eyes. I feel like Vachss simply substituted his old team of roughneck eccentrics for another, but with Cross, Vachss is writing about a world -- high-end, deep-cover operatives and assassins -- that he is less familiar with as a person and a writer. (At least that's how it plays on the page right now. Vachss' personal background, as we all know, is incredibly rich and varied.) On the plus side, Cross and his retinue feel much warmer than they did in their first appearances back in his short-story collections. Structurally, it also feels more like a novella with an extended epilogue than a full-fledged novel.I give it a narrow thumbs-up, with a hope for more and better adventures in the future. less

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