Pain Management
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4.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Burke is back, but still lurking in the shadows, unable to return home. He is prowling the unfamiliar streets of Portland, Oregon, in search of a runaway teen. By all accounts, Rosebud Carlin is a happy, well-adjusted girl. She doesn’t fit the profile of the runaway kids Burke knows so wellÉand once was. But there’s something about her fatherÉ
Burke knows the street script, but the actors are all strangers. Cut off from his family and his network of criminal contacts, Burke is forced into a dangerous alliance with a renegade group dedicated to providing relief to those in intractable pain by any means necessary. A bargain is struck, and the fuse is lit. Heart-stopping and hard-hitting, Pain Management is the latest bout in Andrew Vachss's thrilling reign as undisputed champ of brass knuckles noir.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fans of the Burke series who cheered the author's sudden relocation of his surly protagonist to the Pacific Northwest in Dead and Gone (2000) will be pleased by this latest installment. Burke, the sociopath ex-con with a reputation for hunting down "freaks" with an appetite for children, lands a new job combing Portland's seamy underbelly for a runaway teenager. Cut off from the members of the outlaw New York "family" who graced his earlier adventures, Vachss's postmodern Robin Hood continues to develop his web of West Coast contacts. A tip from his new lady love, Gem (who managed to survive the previous book when Burke himself nearly did not), leads the mauled Burke into a labyrinth of prostitution, deception and murder. Besides dealing with the oddities in the runaway's family, Burke must divine the motives of a cop chasing a serial killer preying on prostitutes, a stylish pimp with a long and dangerous reach, and a crusader against pain (or is she just a drug runner?) for whose mission the book is named. Providing clues as always through stepped-on snatches of dialogue, here Vachss finally lets his secondary characters speak for themselves, as opposed to being wholly defined by Burke's inner growl. While the dark worlds through which Burke journeys are not for the squeamish (Vachss draws upon his own experiences as an attorney for abused children), the author has managed to keep his violent series alive and vigorously kicking. 40,000 first printing.
