‘Another Life’ by Andrew Vachss

  “Another Life” by Andrew Vachss is the newest “Burke” hardcover and also supposedly the last “Burke” novel in the series, according to the author’s marketing people.
  For whatever reason, Vachss has decided to stop writing the series and to pursue a list of other writing projects. Because I knew this would be the last “Burke” novel (remember, Stephen King said that he was retiring from writing all together five years ago, and he’s still at it), I made the assumption that Burke would be killed off, especially in some kind of dynamic fashion that would blow the readers right out their little white cotton bobby socks in total awe and electrifying shock. I was also expecting the final return of Wesley (why? I don’t know) so that he could be with his brother of choice at the end.
  Well, Burke doesn’t die at the end and Wesley doesn’t return from the dead. I know because I reread the ending four times to make sure I didn’t miss something important. No, Burke is still narrating the story in the first person right up until the last sentence.
  My mistake!
  The story deals with the kidnapped son of a Saudi prince in New York City, who enjoys driving around at night and picking up prostitutes while his 2-year-old son is sitting in a car seat in the back, so that the kid can learn from his father what women are really like in his eyes and how they should be treated by those in power. Basically, what it comes down to is that the prince hates women and wants his son to grow up hating them, too, so that he treats them all as objects and with no respect.
  On one particular night, after an eventual encounter with a hooker, the prince suddenly wakes up inside his Rolls Royce, realizing that he’d been put into a drug-induced sleep. His son has been kidnapped. Because of the prince’s money and his contacts in high places, the whole incident is swiftly hushed up and buried. The prince, however, wants his son back, and he hires a man named Pryce, who’s an ex-government shadow man, who knows how to get information and find the right people for any job.
  After Pryce does his own investigating, he comes to the conclusion that a team of child predators might have taken the prince’s son. Pryce then goes to Burke for help. Using Burke’s chosen father, the Professor, as leverage (the Professor is still in a make-shift hospital, recovering from the wound that was acquired in “The Terminal”), he gets the career-criminal to agree to take on the job of finding the little boy. Burke then calls in all of his markers in order to find out who wanted the child, who had the most to gain, and even if the little boy is still alive.
  During the search, Burke inadvertently discovers more about himself and his relationship to his chosen family (Michelle, the Mole, Max the Silent, Mamma, the Professor, Terry and Clarence), and the reader therefore learns more about Burke’s past, especially as a mercenary in Biafra. In the end, Burke will have to make a very important decision with regard to the prince’s son and bringing him back to the one person who actually loves him and only wants what is best for the boy.
  Filled with an array of new characters (Pryce, Cyn and Rejji, Dryslan and Norbert) the reader would certainly like to learn more about, “Another Life” also has large amounts of introspection by Burke and what almost seems like an endless stream of political commentary that reminded me of many of the later novels in the series, offering the reader the opportunity to find out more about the author’s own views on society, law, government and life in general.
  Along with that, there’s a subplot in the novel that deals with Terry’s unexpected involvement with the Professor’s nurse and the romantic relationship that blossoms between them. All of this is fine, but for me, there was no payoff like the one in “The Terminal.” If this was to be Burke’s final novel, then I felt there should’ve been more action and excitement and hard-core violence that was reminiscent of the first several books (“Flood,” “Blue Belle,” “Hard Candy,” “Strega” and “Blossom”) so that the series could come full-circle and fulfill the expectations, which had been set by a gifted writer who literally created a genre of his own with the character of Burke.
  Other fans already have remarked on how this book gave them chills when reading it and that the story line offered them enlightening revelations that answered many of the questions which had arisen from the previous 17 novels. I was hoping for these things myself, but unfortunately, they didn’t come. I truly wanted “Another Life” to be the ultimate reading experience for me in 2009, and preferably of the entire “Burke” series. It wasn’t.
  Also, for some strange reason, I don’t actually feel as if the series is over. In fact, I think Vachss will come back in three or four years with another “Burke” novel, and that maybe this will be the one I’ve been waiting for — a book so damn good that it stuns the reader into absolute silence at the end and leaves him numb with a mixture of emotions that linger long after the novel has been finished … a book so great that the reader eventually says to himself that, “It was well worth the 20-year wait!”