The Star King

I found Jack Vance's Star King a bit of an oddity,very gritty, full of torture and murder,with the "hero" not much better than the villains. A bit like Mickey Spillane in space,hardboiled right through. But lots of interesting different world cultures sketched in,and good old fashioned spaceships which take off and land quite casually.This book is about a man whose family and community were horribly murdered when he was a child by a gang of 5 ruthless arch criminals who have since blended into society. He is now relentlessly in pursuit of them,and in this book is looking for one of them,Malagate the Woe. He narrows down the possibilities to 3 suspects and must now work out which is the baddie. Quite gripping,but a bit too gritty for my tastes,I doubt if I will follow on with his search for the other criminals