Tracy Lawless has
spent 18 months in the hole; locked up in a military prison, no
contact with the outside world. Then he's handed the personal effects
left behind by his brother, murdered nine months earlier; news the
Army kept from Lawless. Two days later, he's gone: headed back to the
city to avenge his brother's death, because that's what guys like him
are supposed to do.
The brothers grew up
in crime, and Tracy knows that if he tracks down Rick's last crew
he's likely to find the killer. So he makes a small heist of his own,
and infiltrates the crew without anyone knowing. But huge burn scars
from his soldier time in the Middle East make him easy to identify.
And the crew is preparing for a big heist, and of course there's a
woman too, who happened to be his brother Rick's girl.
The beauty of this
installment of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips Criminal series isn't so
much the noirish setting, which Phillips' dark art gets well-night
perfect, nor the relentless pace of the story, which Brubaker takes
through twists combined with the usual noirish inevitability. But
what makes it really stand out is the way it shifts times: flashbacks
to the Lawless childhoods, to Tracy's Army service, and the story of
why he's behind bars at the start, and of course the caper which he
intends to use as the stage for his revenge. They segue smoothly, but
what's impressive is the way the stories mesh together, providing
characterization and motivation that makes precise sense, even down to Lawless' names. And it connects, in the end, with previous chapters of the Criminal story.
Being noir, nothing
works out as planned, not relationships, not revenge, not the noirish
femme fatale, and of course not the heist. But the ending is perfect
noir, and there aren't many writers around, in any medium, who get it
as well as Brubaker does. This series moves from strength to
strength.
Criminal Volume
2: Lawless
by Ed Brubaker
and Sean Phillips
Image 2015,
£10.99 ISBN 9781632152039
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