Andrew Vachss. Two Trains Running.
New York: Pantheon Books, 2005. 448 pages. ISBN 1400043816.
I heard Andrew Vachss give a lecture
at a luncheon that I attended in 2005. I was very impressed with his talk; it
was about his crime fiction and the types of crimes that he investigated in his
"real" jobs, working as an advocate for abused children. I bought his
book after the luncheon (signed "Rebecca -- for real -- Andrew
Vachss"). Unfortunately, it took me nine years to get around to reading
it, and in the end, I was disappointed by this book.
Breaking away from his series
fiction, Two Trains Running is a stand-alone novel that is set in a
fictional mid-west town in 1959. The main character is named Walker Dett; he's
a hit man hired by the local crime syndicate's boss, Royal Beaumont. Royal's
crime empire is being threatened by other crime organizations: the Italian
mafia, and Irish. Also threats to Royal’s interests are a rising black power
organization, rival teenage street gangs (the Hawks, the Gladiators, and the
Kings), a neo-Nazi organization, the FBI, and the local police force.
There are too many conflicting
groups and subplots in this book. It was impossible to keep up with all of the
twists, turns, and back stabbing going on. There are so many characters all
trying to screw each other that I ended up not caring about any of them. The
story got more fragmented toward the end, to the point where I'm not actually
sure what happened, and sadly, I don't care enough to try to figure it out. I
wouldn't recommend this book. I don't know what his other books are like, but
they must be fairly popular since he's published so many. Either way, I'm not
likely to try to find out, based on how disappointed I am with this one.
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