We may go through our lives happy or unhappy, successful or unfulfilled, loved, or unloved, without ever standing cold with the shock or recognition, without ever feeling the agony as the twisted iron in our soul unlocks itself and we slip at last into place. For as long as it lasts, Martyn, his son, has no idea that his father is having an extramarital affair with his girlfriend (and later fiancée), and Anna does not seem to mind being a young man's partner and simultaneously his father's lover and object of desire.

From a psychological point of view this might be seen also as primal original event which will set into motion an avalanche of other equally inescapable and devastating events that will impact upon the lives of those at the epicentre and those at the peripheries. Some of the people she encountered saw that trail and run away, most did not see it but were attracted to the sheer hypnotic elegance of the movement. Much is made of Anna’s dark past (it is dark but I won’t reveal why) although I found this aspect of the story a little too contrived, particularly the scenecs where Anna’s mother verbally warns Martyn that Anna has a tortured past and in another scene, when Anna’s stepfather does similar.In his seventh outing, Burke, Vachss's flinty ex-con and relentless crusader for abused kids last featured in Sacrifice , is still reeling after having killed a kid in a previous case gone sour. Anna immediately acknowledges the erotic bond between them, and the two begin a frenzied affair, its moral complications exacerbated by the fact that Anna is the narrator's son's fiancee.

After Damage and Sin comes Oblivion--and that's just what most readers will wish for as they peruse the pages of this pretentious novel. He climbs up a flight of stairs to the top floor, opens the unlocked door to the apartment, and is shocked to see his father making love to his fiancée. I have read all of her five novels and eagerly awaited the next one when by chance learned of her death.Those who are lucky enough to find it ease like water over a stone, onto its fluid contours, and are home. We believe that the untried soul, trapped in its young prison, might have flown free and known the joy that we still seek. Tsunami, avalanche, major fire spring to mind all could be conceived of as an act of God or the work of evil. But his life lacks passion, and his aching emptiness drives him to an all-consuming, and ultimately catastrophic, relationship with his son’s fiancée.