I've asked that question before, I personally like Vachss and
used his
writing style as a pattern to read aloud at a "writer's
group" as an
example of "style". Vachss's New York is very different from
Block's at
all. I was not fond of DOWN AT THE ZERO but the newest SAFE
HOUSE is a
gem and back to his "old" style. It's about violence to women
(and I
thought it was interesting in this book that Vashss again
mentions that
Burke, his protagonist, got his eye injured in Biafra--which
is where
Vachss got the reason behind his eye-patch). Vachss is sort
of hard to
read (even harder that Ellroy) because it deals so directly
with a pure
anti-hero (after all who can sympathsize with a character who
runs
around in a van killing folks?) but Burke does remind me of
the old
comic book characters of the '50's).
-- whose DOROTHYL nom is Kate Warne the ex-Pinkerton in The Woman With the Rose Tattoo by Mari Hall See y'all at Bouchercon 29 in Philly Oct.1-4 # # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.