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A review by ncrabb
Strega by Andrew Vachss
2.0
A pedophile diddled six-year-old Scott while he was on a school field trip. The creep not only forced the boy to do unspeakable horrors, but he also took a single picture of the experience.
Burke is an unconventional detective, to say the least. He’s an ex-con turned private investigator, and when the money runs low on his investigations, he turns to scams and identity theft to keep the wolves from the door. There’s not much about him that seems redeemable, and yet, his investigations damage those who are evil and uphold decency. He just has unorthodox, scary ways of getting at the truth.
Gina is a slim, small-breasted redhead who refers to herself as Strega whenever she’s around Burke. Another ex-con who learned Strega is searching for that illusive picture of little Scott refers her to Burke. Strega isn’t Scott’s mom, but Scott plays with her daughter, Mia.
This, then, is the account of an ethically impaired detective digging among the ethically nonexistent pedophile community to find that one picture that could help little Scott more fully recover. Burke’s search takes him into the dark and filthy realms of the pedophile community, and the author provides an unflinching, unblinking examination of that community including horrifying descriptions of some of the images Burke discovers. In fact, every sex scene in this book is loveless and beyond graphically detailed. Vachss provides jarringly close-up descriptions of the oral sex Strega performs on Burke. Those descriptions frankly disgusted me. I’m never going to be able to unhear the images described in those child porn pictures Burke finds. I’m not sure I can finish this series and subject myself to that kind of spiritual damage. If you like your sexual descriptions extremely edgy and far less formulaic and tiresome than what most authors turn out, this could be your kind of book. I’m more tolerant of that stuff than I ought to be, but this one rocked me hard. A spiritual/brain shower is much harder to achieve than the physical kind designed to remove external grit and grime. Please don’t mistake this as a criticism of the author. It’s not. If he didn’t write so memorably and well, I could kick this series to the curb and summarily dismiss it as tiresome, formulaic, and predictable. That’s not at all how he writes. This stuff is too detailed, too graphical, and too hard to forget. That’s a hallmark of an excellent writer. The natural-man sleazy me is fascinated by this series and wants to continue it; but the series horrifies and sickens a bigger part of me. I’m not sure whether I can keep reading it.
Burke is an unconventional detective, to say the least. He’s an ex-con turned private investigator, and when the money runs low on his investigations, he turns to scams and identity theft to keep the wolves from the door. There’s not much about him that seems redeemable, and yet, his investigations damage those who are evil and uphold decency. He just has unorthodox, scary ways of getting at the truth.
Gina is a slim, small-breasted redhead who refers to herself as Strega whenever she’s around Burke. Another ex-con who learned Strega is searching for that illusive picture of little Scott refers her to Burke. Strega isn’t Scott’s mom, but Scott plays with her daughter, Mia.
This, then, is the account of an ethically impaired detective digging among the ethically nonexistent pedophile community to find that one picture that could help little Scott more fully recover. Burke’s search takes him into the dark and filthy realms of the pedophile community, and the author provides an unflinching, unblinking examination of that community including horrifying descriptions of some of the images Burke discovers. In fact, every sex scene in this book is loveless and beyond graphically detailed. Vachss provides jarringly close-up descriptions of the oral sex Strega performs on Burke. Those descriptions frankly disgusted me. I’m never going to be able to unhear the images described in those child porn pictures Burke finds. I’m not sure I can finish this series and subject myself to that kind of spiritual damage. If you like your sexual descriptions extremely edgy and far less formulaic and tiresome than what most authors turn out, this could be your kind of book. I’m more tolerant of that stuff than I ought to be, but this one rocked me hard. A spiritual/brain shower is much harder to achieve than the physical kind designed to remove external grit and grime. Please don’t mistake this as a criticism of the author. It’s not. If he didn’t write so memorably and well, I could kick this series to the curb and summarily dismiss it as tiresome, formulaic, and predictable. That’s not at all how he writes. This stuff is too detailed, too graphical, and too hard to forget. That’s a hallmark of an excellent writer. The natural-man sleazy me is fascinated by this series and wants to continue it; but the series horrifies and sickens a bigger part of me. I’m not sure whether I can keep reading it.