Footsteps of the Hawk by Andrew Vachss

First published in 1995

The Burke series was losing some of its energy by the time Footsteps of the Hawk came along. Andrew Vachss used the Burke books as message novels, but readers got the message early on. Vachss' narrow focus on the damage done by child predators left Burke without much room to grow, and that's a deadly flaw in a series built on a recurring character.

Footsteps of the Hawk is one of the better late entries in the series, however, largely because the plot doesn't focus on child abuse. Vachss still conveys his message, but he does so in asides and flashbacks without hindering the development of the central story. The plot involves two cops who have it in for Burke: a lone wolf named Jorge Morales and a woman named Belinda. Morales seems intent on taking Burke down while Belinda wants to use him for her own ends. Her scheme involves an inmate who, she says, is innocent of at least some of the slayings he's accused of committing. She hires Burke to prove his innocence. The mission changes as the story moves along, and the truth -- what the woman really wants -- naturally proves to be quite different. Whether Morales and Belinda are working together or against each other is unclear until the end. The story kept me guessing and it resolves with a nifty twist.

The supporting cast (the Prof, the Mole, Max the Silent, Clarence, Mama) grew a bit stale over the years, so the addition of a new character to Burke's retinue is refreshing. Frankie is a boxer, learning the trade from the Prof with an assist from Max. He's deferential to Burke's buddies and serves them with unquestioning loyalty. It's therefore easy to understand why Burke likes him despite his lack of any discernible personality. Heck, I liked him. The boxing scenes add interest to the story while giving Burke another subject upon which to muse. Burke's streetwise philosophy is one of the series' charms even if, at times, it becomes overbearing.

As a reader would expect from Vachss, the prose is crisp and the pace is quick. The gritty streets of New York City, usually visited in the dead of night, charge the novel with bleak atmosphere and contribute to the growing tension. Even when the Burke series was wearing thin, Vachss proved himself to be a talented storyteller, making Footsteps of the Hawk a satisfying read for fans of crime novels. 

RECOMMENDED

Katya's World by Jonathan L. Howard

Published by Strange Chemistry on November 13, 2012 

Katya’s World is an action-driven science fiction novel.  Engaging characters and a high fun factor compensate for its lack of depth.

The Russalkans, out of touch with Earth for more than a century, live in caves they have carved into undersea mountains on the ocean world they have colonized.  When the Terrans finally return, the Russalkans no longer consider themselves subordinate to Terran government.  Russalka goes to war to defend itself from Earth’s claim to ownership of the planet and governance of its peoples.  Russalka prevails when Earth’s fleet unexpectedly departs.  Since the reason for that retreat remains a mystery, the Russalkans worry that their victory is only temporary.

It is against this background that Katya Kuriakova becomes an apprentice submarine navigator.  On her first voyage, however, the sub is commandeered by a federal officer who needs to transport a pirate named Havilland Kane to a federal prison.  Kane, polite and jovial, seems to pose little danger.  More menacing is a deep sea creature they come to call the Leviathan, a beast that seems not quite alive but not quite mechanical.

I’ve always been a sucker for submarine stories, but I thought the undersea action in Katya’s World was particularly exciting.  Yeah, it’s sort of an underwater space opera but how often do you read one of those?  There’s enough plot here to hold the action sequences together, but it’s the action, not the plot, that drives the story.  Fortunately, the action scenes are vivid, making Katya’s World a stirring read.

The most interesting aspect of Katya’s World is Katya’s ambivalence about Earth.  It is, on the one hand, the birthplace of Russalkan civilization, and on the other, the homeworld of an enemy that seems determined to destroy Russsalka.  Her hatred of Terrans is tempered by what she learns of Earth during the course of the novel.  Almost as interesting is the story’s political background, which features not just a war with Earth but a brewing civil war.  While all of that exists only to flesh out the action story, it at least gives the reader something to think about while pausing for breath between chase scenes, shootouts, and torpedo launchings.

Katya is a strong, likable character.  She’s plucky, she thinks on her feet, and she isn’t full of herself.  The other characters tend to be stereotypes but they are effective stereotypes, playing the roles they need to play to move the story forward while manipulating the reader’s emotions with rousing speeches and acts of self-sacrifice.

By the end of Katya’s World, Katya has been tested in many ways, has survived it all and has even matured a bit.  It’s not clear where her life will take her, but I look forward to reading the next novel to find out.

RECOMMENDED

The Boy in the Snow by M.J. McGrath

Published by Viking on November 8, 2012 

Edie Kiglatuk is an Inuit from Ellesmere Island; she thinks Anchorage is uncomfortably hot and crowded.  She’s there for the Iditarod, supporting her ex-husband’s participation in the race.  Before the race starts, however, Edie gets lost in the forest while following a spirit bear.  She encounters a couple who warn her that she is on Old Believer land while grudgingly pointing her in the direction of the road.  Making her way back to her snowmobile, Edie finds a frozen baby inside a small structure that resembles a dog house.  A cross has been marked on the baby’s body.  The police tell Edie that the small house she found is a spirit house used in Athabaskan religious ceremonies.  Soon another frozen baby is discovered in a spirit house.  The police clearly want to blame the deaths on the Old Believers, former Russians who, having separated from the official Russian Orthodox Church, cling to ancient liturgical practices.  Rumors abound that the babies were kidnapped by the Dark Believers, a Satan worshipping sect of the Old Believers that may not actually exist.  Perhaps to lay those rumors to rest, the police arrest an Old Believer who seems as likely a suspect as any.  Edie, of course, believes he’s innocent.

A second storyline concerns Alaska’s gubernatorial election.  Anchorage Mayor Chuck Hillingburg is running against a popular incumbent.  The reader knows that Hillingburg is tied to a lodge that has something to do with the deaths, but the nature of the connection remains a mystery until Edie puzzles it out.  A third storyline concerns the Old Believers’ theory that they are being framed by Tommy Schofield, a property developer who wants to acquire land that the Old Believers refuse to sell.

Edie is an annoyingly self-righteous character.  Her disagreeable personality makes it difficult to care when she finds herself in peril.  No other character offsets Edie; the others are uniformly bland.

The plot involves two different but related criminal enterprises.  One is unlikely and the other completely implausible, even by the standards of modern crime novels.  The ending is abrupt and the plots wrap up too neatly thanks to some improbably convenient revelations.

The story includes a couple of unnecessary plot summaries, in which characters explain to other characters what the reader already knows.  Perhaps M.J. McGrath thought her readers were too dim to remember the events that had already transpired, but any benefit these passages have as a memory boost is offset by their pace-deadening drag on the story.

Despite those complaints, some positive aspects of The Boy in the Snow are worth mentioning, as the novel might be of interest to readers who have an affinity for tales of the frozen tundra.  McGrath is a capable writer who paints striking images of the Alaskan wilderness.  Action scenes move quickly.  A scene that has Edie and two other characters stranded in a snow storm, fighting for survival, is so convincing I was shivering.

I like the novel’s message of religious tolerance, its condemnation of prejudice against nontraditional religions and its recognition that every religion has its fanatics.  McGrath has a sharp eye for Alaska’s politicians and those who control them, “the same bunch of old sourdoughs, bankrolling each other, glad-handing, swapping jobs, pushing their agenda and keeping anyone new out.”

The Boy in the Snow is the second novel featuring Edie Kiglatuk (I haven't read the first).  McGrath almost gets it right. I'll avoid further novels in the series, however, unless I hear that Edie has warmed up a bit, or at least developed a more interesting personality.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Under the Eye of God by Jerome Charyn

Published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road on October 30, 2012 

I'm not sure what Under the Eye of God is meant to be. Is it a thriller that doesn't thrill? A political satire that isn't funny? A melodrama that lacks emotion? The novel attempts to be many things and doesn't succeed at any of them. The meandering story is eventful, but it is ultimately a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Isaac Sidel, the immensely popular gun-toting mayor of New York, is running for vice president in 1988. The scandal-ridden presidential candidate is Michael Storm. Sidel is wildly popular with the electorate, largely because he carries a Glock and regularly shoots people with it, and is largely responsible for Storm's victory. The incumbent president, perhaps an even bigger scoundrel than Storm, decides to frame Sidel as a pedophile (an accusation made possible only because Sidel is inexplicably traveling on a campaign bus with Storm's immensely popular twelve-year-old girl), thus nullifying the party's best asset. Sidel tumbles to the plot only because the president's astrologer abandons him after he punches her in the nose. We learn all of this in a preposterous first chapter that ends with Sidel tackling an apparent assassin because the four screamingly incompetent Secret Service agents charged with protecting him are too far away to act.

Later in the novel we learn that the astrologer isn't who she seems to be, that various would-be assassins aren't who they seem to be, and that a glamorous woman named Inez -- who becomes the most recent of Sidel's varied love interests -- is really Trudy Winckleman. Trudy is the modern incarnation of the orginal Inez, a woman who captivated gangster Arnold Rothstein in the 1920s. Rothstein was the mentor of David Pearl who, in turn, became Sidel's mentor. By 1988, Pearl owns a good chunk of New York City and has unsettling plans for the Bronx. A conflict naturally ensues between Pearl and Sidel.

The disjointed plot careens like a go-kart with no brakes driven by a blind gorilla. It makes jarring departures from present to past, from place to place and event to event, moving in such a frenetic, haphazard fashion that the reader has no opportunity to settle in and enjoy the ride. Every time it seems like Jerome Charyn might be ready to tell a coherent story, a new tangent emerges to send the plot skidding off in another direction. Each chapter addresses a fresh scandal, resulting in a disturbing discontinuity. The binding thread is a scheme that comes to Sidel's attention when he sees the Army Corps of Engineers stumbling around in the Bronx, but the scheme receives only sporadic attention and even if it were believable, it wouldn't be interesting. With so much going on, it is surprising that the story is so often dull.

At its best, Under the Eye of God reads like an ode to New York City, particularly its architecture. Charyn writes lovingly of the Ansonia, home of such luminaries as Enrico Caruso and Babe Ruth. Of course, Sidel can't enter the Ansonia without shooting someone with his Glock. Maybe Sidel is supposed to be modeled upon Rudy "Look at Me, I'm Tough on Crime" Giuliani, but even Rudy left the actual killing to the NYPD.

As political satire, Under the Eye of God is hopeless. Every political character in the novel is corrupt except, of course, for the straight-shooting Sidel. Satire this heavy-handed is too predictable to be funny. The novel fails as a love story because it's impossible to care whether Sidel will fulfill his fickle romantic ambitions. As a crime novel, the story is a bust. Crime permeates the novel but none of it can be taken seriously. The story fails to create the slightest bit of dramatic tension. With no humor, no believable drama, and no characters worth caring about, Under the Eye of God doesn't deserve to fall under the eye of any reader.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Assholes: A Theory by Aaron James

Published by Doubleday on October 30, 2012 

Aaron James took a break from the philosopher's customary search for the meaning of life to ponder a more burning question: What does it mean to be an asshole? I have the sense that James wrote Assholes so he could share his complaints about surfers who behave like assholes, particularly Brazilians. Whatever his motivation, and despite his earnest attempt to subject assholes to scholarly thought, much of Assholes is enjoyable simply because the topic is so appealing. Everyone, after all, has an opinion about assholes.

Assholes consistently cut in line, interrupt, and engage in name-calling. They do not play well with others (in James' language, they are not fully cooperative members of society). Many (perhaps most) people occasionally behave like an asshole without becoming an asshole. As a theory of the asshole, James posits that an asshole is a person who enjoys "special advantages in interpersonal relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people." Although I think "asshole" is pretty much self-defining, in the sense of "I know one when I see one," I like James' definition. I think it's a definition rather than a theory, but I'm probably just quibbling about semantics (which is pretty much the philosopher's job description, making it a battle I can't win). Whether it is a theory or a definition, after he finishes parsing it, James politely suggests that it is up to the reader to decide whether to agree with it. James is plainly no asshole.

James tells us that assholes are morally repugnant but not truly evil. If you're interested in standard philosophical discussions of moral behavior and moral responsibility with references to the likes of Aristotle, Kant, and Buber, you'll find them here. Those of us who needed strong coffee to make it through our philosophy classes are probably hoping for something more fun than a rehash of Martin Buber in a book titled Assholes. We're looking for the author to name names. Happily, James does so (although not without some preliminary hand-wringing about whether calling out assholes is something only an asshole would do). From Simon Cowell to Mel Gibson, from Donald Trump to Steve Jobs, from Ann Coulter to Bill O'Reilly, James finds assholes in every walk of life. James even suggests that book reviewers can be assholes (oh my!) although he does so in the context of academia.

Consistent with his definitional/taxonomic approach, James classifies assholes by type, including the boorish asshole (Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore), the smug asshole (Richard Dawkins, Larry Summers), the asshole boss (Naomi Campbell), the presidential asshole (Hugo Chavez), the reckless asshole (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld), the self-aggrandizing asshole (Ralph Nader), the cable news asshole (Neil Cavuto, Keith Olbermann), and the delusional asshole (Kanye West, Wall Street bankers).

James' approach to categorization lends itself to party games. You can make up categories James overlooked, like the sports asshole (George Steinbrenner, Michael Vick), or you can add names to the categories he's invented. Don't worry, there are plenty more assholes identified in the book -- the names I've cherry-picked are illustrative only -- as well as some categories I haven't mentioned, but you'll easily think of more. The book is short and the world is filled with assholes.

Returning to the realm of philosophy, James considers whether assholes are morally responsible for being assholes, which leads to a discussion of whether assholes have free will. James' conclusion is at odds with the answer you would get from a neuroscientist like Bruce Hood, but whether you blame assholes or accept that they can't help being who they are, you're still stuck with them. James reasons that assholes are generally male because they are shaped by the culture of gender, although I think he puts too fine a point on it when he draws subtle distinctions between assholes and bitches. I also think he's a bit naive when he argues that, for cultural reasons, American men are more likely to be assholes than Japanese men, a proposition with which many Southeast Asians (not to mention the surviving residents of Nanking) would disagree.

James includes a chapter on how to manage assholes (short version: you really can't, but you can try to make yourself feel good) and a chapter that suggests how capitalist societies (which encourage the sense of entitlement on which assholes thrive) can deteriorate when the asshole ethic takes root (short version: greed isn't good, Gordon Gecko notwithstanding). The concluding chapter tells us how to find a peaceful life in a world full of assholes (short version: reconcile yourself to the things you cannot change while hoping for a better world). These chapters give James a chance to apply the thoughts of Plato and St. Augustine and the Stoics and Rousseau and even Jesus to the topic of assholes. Heavy thinkers will probably enjoy those discussions. Lightweight thinkers, like me, will enjoy the name naming while looking forward to the party games the book inspires.

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