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Blackjack (Cross)
by
Andrew Vachss (Goodreads Author)
TO: UNIT 3 Chicago
FROM: DIRECTOR
IMPORTANCE: Critical
SUBJECT:Specimen Retrieval
TARGET: Shadowy hunter-killer teams, ID'ed viasignature killsworldwide. Identifiable onlyby skull-spine removal from victims. No witnesses, no forensics, no particular race targeted. On rare occasions, scraps of what appear to be playing cardsfound at murder sites.
OBJECTIVE: Locate and capture an...more
FROM: DIRECTOR
IMPORTANCE: Critical
SUBJECT:Specimen Retrieval
TARGET: Shadowy hunter-killer teams, ID'ed viasignature killsworldwide. Identifiable onlyby skull-spine removal from victims. No witnesses, no forensics, no particular race targeted. On rare occasions, scraps of what appear to be playing cardsfound at murder sites.
OBJECTIVE: Locate and capture an...more
Paperback, 240 pages
Published
July 10th 2012
by Vintage
(first published July 3rd 2012)
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Community Reviews
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3½ stars. Although I really did enjoy this book, it is familiar territory. The main story is a re-imagining of the one already told in Dark Horse Comics' Predator: Race War miniseries. This book is an improvement on that story as one gets Vachss' full prose with all of the character details and nuance that don't come through in the comic medium (at least not as Dark Horse does comics). If you ever wanted Vachss to write a speculative horror novel, this is as close as you're going to get. At the...more
Cross is an urban mercenary in Chicago, where he and his crew act as guns for hire on the mean streets of the city. When a shadowy government agency is unable to make any headway in a series of brutal killings that have spanned the globe, they go rogue and hire Cross and his crew to take the job and find the killers. But Cross doesn’t come easy. In addition to a considerable amount of money Cross demands a “get out of jail free card” freeing him from any crime, anywhere at any time. Which is goo...more
These are barely warmed-up leftovers that for a bonus flirt with trademark and copyright violations.
If you read any author long enough there's a pretty good chance you're going to recognize bits and pieces from their previous works, and I'm certainly willing to forgive that up to a point, as well as stretching the definitions of "novel-length". But what Andrew Vachss has done here is expand the story he created for Predator: Race War with some alterations so that the killer is no longer an extra...more
If you read any author long enough there's a pretty good chance you're going to recognize bits and pieces from their previous works, and I'm certainly willing to forgive that up to a point, as well as stretching the definitions of "novel-length". But what Andrew Vachss has done here is expand the story he created for Predator: Race War with some alterations so that the killer is no longer an extra...more
Jul 12, 2012
Brian
added it
Andrew Vachss is probably the most qualified author in this genre, and he is a sterling writer. He writes about the dark side of life and his books are dark. They are crushingly dark because they are as real as you can get. He forces you to look at the danger and cold heartedness of people at a certain level in society. You knew about this but never look at it. He was a policeman, detective, lawyer, advocate and crusader. He invented court room dogs, a wonderful idea.
He makes Jo Nesbo look mild...more
He makes Jo Nesbo look mild...more
I kept hoping it would get better, but it didn't. The ending was disappointing. Characters weren't believable and the whole smoke thing was just weird. I had a tough time wrapping my head around Alex Cross being a thug, and not a heroic police detective as is true for another Alex Cross on James Patterson books.
I enjoyed this one, even with the shadow of the movie "Predator" mixed in. Pretty action packed to the end. Liked the insight on the background of "Princess". This story has an interesting concept. I'm still sorting through personalities of Cross and the "crew". Big puzzles.
Vachss has a unique, gritty style...crime noir for sure. This was a little different than his other novels, though, with a tinge of the supernatural. A little more confusing and with the stylistic prose that is characteristic of Vachss's writing. Not bad, but not among his best.
Vachss is one of my favorite authors. This was certainly an interesting story with a supernatural twist to it, but not as good as some of his other works. I feel like it could have been expanded more.
As some other reviews mention, this book does borrow from other works of Mr. Vachss, and bends slightly to the Sci-fi, it is still a great read. Mr. Vachss is one hell of a writer and does not disappoint.
Vachss never changes. The first few Burke books were very interesting, especially "Flood." But his writing quickly became formulaic. This title does nothing to change my mind. And it doesn't even have Patty for fun.
I hope the coming books in the new series featuring the Cross character are not as metaphysical as this book was. All in all, not nearly as good as the Burke novels.
This may not be as good as a Burke Novel but it comes pretty darn close. I'm still not sure how I feel about the "Predator"-like aspect of the story.
Amazing. Even better than I had hoped after having read the Cross short stories.
meh. This is the first Vachss novel I've read (and I've read them all) that didn't absolutely absorb me to the point of sleeplessness. It just didn't click for me. The characters didn't develop and the story line was not believable. Hope his next one is more compelling.
It was ok. Not quite what I like to read.
I love all of Vachss's Burke novels. This was good, but a little weird, and it's hard to say why without spoiling the plot. It's different from his other work in some respects, and in many it's similar. Definitely worth a read, but not one of my favorite's of his.
this book is a copy of Predator : Race War with only minor changes. Read Born Bad, Everybody Pays, and Hard Looks instead.
If you dig the Cross and Crew stories- hard as hell men's adventure mercenary tales with a motley crew of grotesques- now they've got their own book, and the story is a blast.
Meh, not his best work, not his worst. Kind of what I would expect a ghost writer for Vachss to turn out, which is a shame, since Cross is a fairly new character for him.
the writing as ever was lean and exact. However the story just didn't hang together that well.
May 23, 2013
Elli
marked it as to-read
May 07, 2013
Jeff A
marked it as to-read
May 02, 2013
Jason Ragle
marked it as to-read
Apr 30, 2013
Jessica Chism johnson
marked it as to-read
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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| Goodreads Librari...: To link? If so how? | 3 | 153 | Aug 01, 2012 11:01pm |
Andrew Vachss has been a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a social-services caseworker, a labor organizer, and has directed a maximum-security prison for “aggressive-violent” youth. Now a lawyer in private practice, he represents children and youths exclusively. He is the author of numerous novels, including the Burke series, two collections of short stories, and a wide varie...more
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Aug 01, 2012 04:56am