BURN ME OUT is very human crime novel. Lifelong mobster Al Vacarro has come to a realization, that he is miserable and his life is pointless. And from the first page, I could tell that this book was going to have the kind of conflict that makes me uncomfortable, but I kept reading anyway and that's a tribute to Barrows' storytelling. The characters in this book are not good people, mostly they are bad or sad or just indifferent, but they feel real and I wanted to keep up with them as we learn about their lives. The story has a lot of misery in it, and I didn't see the ending coming at all, but it has a tiny glimmer of hope in it and that's very familiar. I think the ending might be the most realistic part of the entire book and I'm glad I stuck with it to get there.