The Edge Online - Book Reviews: Andrew Vachss

Shella
Andrew Vachss
Macmillan hardback, 224 pages
Published October 1993
ISBN 0333601831
Pan paperback, 240 pages
Published October 1994
ISBN 0330334131
Review by Gerald Houghton (1994)

There are, we can suppose, two types of American crime writing: the tough, street-smart fictional kind, and the savage, hyperreal reportage kind. Andrew Vachss is arguably the one genre novelist that can comfortably lay claim to straddling both camps.

A former Federal Investigator, prison director, labour organiser and overseas troubleshooter, Vachss is currently a lawyer in private practice who pens his sweaty, terrifying novels strictly as a sideline to his one-man war against child abuse in New York. His particular blend of (he insists) tuned-down writing is used partly to finance his legal work, and has largely centred, in the novels at least, on the driven, street-savvy Burke, an anti-hero cast very much in his creator's own image. Shella, therefore, comes as something of a change.

The novel is narrated by Ghost, an imaginative, efficient and ice-cold assassin, one that kills only with his hands. One that can always find work on the war zone streets of America's big cities. And one that views his stints in prison not as cathartic but as nothing more than time passed. But his drifting has been interrupted by a woman called Shella, a survivor herself and one who has, momentarily, seen behind the cruel mask Ghost wears. Her disappearance spurs him on a cross-country quest to track her, and one that leads him through possibly the darkest landscape of any Vachss novel to date.

Child abuse will always be on his agenda, but here takes something of a backseat; present but not as big a driving force as previously. Instead, this is a journey through the whole underbelly of US society, as Ghost spends the initial pages trawling the topless bars, whore houses and S&M underground – these sections are as harsh, seedy and desperate as Vachss readers have come to appreciate, pages dripping in disgust. But just when it seems to be reaching saturation point, there is an uncharacteristic switch, and Ghost finds himself pitched for reasons of expediency into the world of the would-be paramilitary White Power underground, masquerading as a thug to infiltrate a neo-Nazi enclave.

While no one can pretend that the world of a Vachss novel is a picnic, nor can he be accused of sensationalism for effect. (He has said that to open his case files would be to infinitely outstrip the horrors of his fictions). His style is in itself aggressive, confrontational, the dry prose pared to bone, reaching a curious literary effect almost by default. It offers little or no mitigation for events or characters, leaving itself open to the sting of bigotry from which it relies upon the intelligence of the reader to decode motivation and morality – the author's disgust at the fascism, homophobia, racism and misogyny fair runs off the page in rivers.

Vachss in fiction, like Vachss in life, takes no prisoners. His outspoken, scrupulously moral books grab the reader by the shirt and scream vitriol into their face. To this end, Shella is, in its slight shift away from the norm, a fascinating, appalling read. Vachss is at the toughest end of crime writing, and it's no pretty sight by any means, but those brave enough would do well to take to a long, hard look. This one of his very best.