By Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips (Image Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-63215-298-5
Way back in 2007, Tracey Lawless debuted in the second Criminal story-arc: a tough but comparatively honest guy drawn back from military service and into the underworld to repay his family’s debts.
At that time collaborators Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips were forging a creative partnership incapable of setting a foot wrong: each stand-alone tale building on the previous exploit, getting tougher, stronger, meaner and better…
Everything is set in and around Center City, a prototypical American everytown which serves as a shared backdrop for various seemingly unconnected ventures. Slowly, however, connections were made and a wider mosaic began to become clearer…
The entire series of compulsive crime capers was repackaged and re-released as a uniform set of trade paperbacks in 2015 with this as the fifth turbulent tome (reprinting the five issue comicbook series Criminal: The Sinners, September 2009-March 2010) as Lawless rears his battered grizzled head once again…
For a year the Lawless has been working off his dad’s and brother Ricky‘s debts to undisputed Boss of Bosses Sebastian Hyde, killing whoever the ruthless bastard tells him to.
At least that was the plan, but Lawless doesn’t like wholesale slaughter and has been quietly choosing who lives or dies. Sure, he’ll cap anybody who really deserves it – and there are plenty of them – but he’s been increasingly finding ways to punish the little people who arouse Hyde’s ire without needing the services of an undertaker afterwards.
Despite himself, Sebastian has a grudging respect for Tracey and has been letting it slide, since Lawless has been his most effective enforcer since he joined the team. He’d probably feel less sanguine if he knew what his star goon was doing with Mrs. Hyde…
Today, however, Hyde has an even bigger problem, one that needs brains not butchery.
All over town well-connected associates considered utterly beyond the reach of the law and even underworld rivals have been hit: not just Sebastian’s crew, but also feared and respected colleagues-in-crime nobody should be able to get near. It’s affecting everyone’s business and has to be stopped. Hyde owns plenty of cops, but this is something he needs sorted by someone he can at least control if not trust…
Tracy is no sleuth, but with no other choice, begins making enquiries into the shootings. Father Grant was a loan-shark and possible serial sexual predator, shielded by both the Church and the Mob; Scotty Adsit ran drugs and collected thumbs from those who baulked him and Big Tom McGinnis was the elder Statesman of the Irish Mafia, capped in his own restaurant rest room with twenty bodyguards just outside. There’s no connection other than that they were all very bad people and in every execution it’s like the killer was invisible…
Further complicating the issue is the arrival of military cop Special Agent Yoakum. Tracey has been AWOL for year now and despite his current untenable situation has no desire to trade it for active service or a stockade…
As he flounders through the darkest regions of the underworld, the death toll mounts. Joe Hill was Sebastian’s top man inside the police force and best hope for a lead, but he was left dead in the gutter before Lawless could meet him. However he provides a first inkling of what’s really going on and an idle comment from a sympathetic Internal Affairs cop forces Lawless to re-examine his assumptions…
In the course of his investigations Tracey met war vet and replacement priest Father Mike, but had no idea that while he was starting to put things together, Sebastian has made a few misapprehensions of his own and is now gunning for his unwilling gunsel…
As the bodycount of untouchables keeps rising, Tracey tracks another potential answer to Chinatown and ends up framed for the death of a Triad Boss, just as Yoakum closes in. All the time the trail keeps coming back to the church and Father Mike, but Tracey is blithely unaware that he has already met the killer – who has also passed sentence on him too – or that Sebastian has decided to cut his losses…
As all the strands converge, the slaughter mounts and when the shooting stops the criminal hierarchy of Centre City has changed forever…
Filled with twists, turns and devious double-cross, this viciously effective sex-&-violence saga offers a stark look at the other side of society: providing an irresistible view of raw humanity. These stories are amongst the very best crime comics ever crafted: ignore them at your peril…
© 2015 Basement Gang Inc. All rights reserved. Criminal™ and all prominent characters, likenesses and logos are trademarks of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.