This is the second of Burke's Edgar winning novels, and those two awards were what led an unlikely fan such as myself, an urban woman from the Pacific Northwestern US, to commence reading a series about a cowboy-type cop in Texas.My setting and Burke's are very different, as are our tastes in food, climate, and surroundings, but our values work along very similar lines in most ways, and key among them is the role of class and money in what passes for a justice system in this country.The Vanzandt family are among the baddest of the baddies in this book, and he describes this type of person really well. I grew up attending a school with a lot of wealthy folk, since my mother valued education and wanted me to attend the best possible public school. I lived with my parents in an apartment and my father begged his father for rent money from time to time. The times I was invited to parties at homes of carelessly affluent students who took their privilege for granted, having known little else, came back to me immediately when the Vanzandt family is painted with Burke's prose:"...they held token jobs at businesses they would one day inherit. But it was a strange solipsistic attitude toward others that truly defined them." I had to look up "solipsistic", and when I found out what it meant, I could have cried over having lost half a century of life without its use. (You'll have to look it up yourself; what am I, your mother?)As usual, Burke's protagonist (in this case Billy Bob Holland) talks to the dead. It adds a unique counterpoint. His best friend, L.Q. Navarro, speaks to him from the great beyond and tells him, "Don't let them kind get to you...the kind with money."Of course, there are the hangers-on who say (in a frighteningly familiar tone), "He can't help it if he's rich." PLEEEASE.The sheriff is undoubtedly corrupt and violent; L.Q. says so, and we can see it in the kind of home he has, far beyond the pale of a man with the salary of a small town lawman. The country club set that leaves its suntan lotion filming the water of the shamrock-shaped swimming pool has him on some kind of rope. But more so does the agency that Holland finds betrays what seems right and honorable most: the DEA. In one after another of Burke's stories, the most hideously immoral individuals are permitted to commit one atrocity after another, and often as not supported in high style on the tax payer's dollar, so that the spooks and DEA can follow them around, watch them do these things without any interference, even call off the local (honest) lawmen and slap them away from their prize informant, and in the end, the ugliest bastard of them all, apart from the Feds, gets off free and clear:"Men like Felix Ringo did the jobs for the forces of Empire that no government ever acknowledged. They went to special schools and carried badges and were endowed with marginal respectability, but their real credentials lay in their bottomless cruelty...each of them daily fed his perversity like a gardener tending a hothouse filled with poisonous flowers."I won't give you any more details, except to say that I found one irritatingly common plot device here, but upon reflection, I think that I saw it previously in books that were copyrighted later than this one; thus I had read others imitating Burke rather than the reverse.If you missed out on this book when it was new, get a copy now. Last time I looked, a prominent used bookstore in Portland, Oregon had some copies available by mail. If you enjoy good word smithery, brilliantly done characters and unmatchable plot, you have to read this book.
"Sometimes you’ve got to set people’s perspective straight." Cimarron Rose introduces another member of the Holland clan in Billy Bob Holland, a former Texas Ranger and state prosecutor turned defense lawyer. Billy Bob as with all James Lee Burke characters comes with an honesty tainted with darkness that makes these brooding irresistible forces incredibly powerful and intriguing.My favourite method of storytelling is by far first person point of view, when done right it puts you in the character, you feel and think what they feel and think and Burke is one of the best exponents on the market. His descriptive prose is both palpable and epical, his heroes touched at times with a heaviness that weighs on the conscience like a relentless shadow or a dishonourable moral judgementI always highlight a vast amount of quotes when reading Burkes work and I'll leave some dotted through my review as always.'I could almost see the knotted thoughts in his eyes as he looked for the trap he always found in other people’s words.'Ok to the story, Billy Bob is asked to represent his illegitimate teenage son accused of raping and beating a girlfriend to death, young Lucas remembers nothing and was found in an alcohol fuelled unconscious state in his truck with his pants down.'The yard seemed filled with shadows that leaped and broke apart and reformed themselves in the wind.'During his delving our protagonist has to deal with a crazed serial killer with links to his father, a DEA investigation, a crooked Mexican narc and the rich and powerful Vanzandt family whose son is a mixed bag of drugs and trouble. And the ghost of his dead partner, a frequent test on his sanity.'The resentment in her voice was like a child’s, muted, turned inward, resonant with fear.'Within the story Billy Bob reads from the journal of his great grandfather Sam, a book within a book in which Sam is quite taken with a Native American woman named Jennie, which is the Christian name of the Rose of Cimarron an outlaw legend.'Her smile was attenuated, wan, a victorious recognition of the assent she had extracted from me. Then I saw it in her eyes. She had already revised him and placed him in the past, assigning him qualities he never had, as the roles of widow and proprietress melded together in her new life.'Don't get me wrong I thoroughly enjoyed this, I love James Lee Burkes style of writing, seeing through the very soul of your protagonist is exhilarating but I had a few minor issues with the Cimarron Rose. Firstly I couldn't see what the journal of his great grandfather actually added to the story, seemed a bit of an excuse to name drop a few infamous outlaws from the West and the ghost of his partner engaging in conversations and offering advice didn't really do it for me. Finally I don't think Billy Bob Is a defense lawyer, the court room stuff didn't fit in with his persona he’s certainly more of a rough and ready law man type.Still even my least favourite of JLB's so far is easily worth 4 stars.Also posted at http://paulnelson.booklikes.com/post/...
Do You like book Cimarron Rose (1998)?
Another great story from James Lee Burke. I really like his series on the Holland family and although Hackberry is my favorite, Billy Bob is right in there. There is a lot of similarity here with the Robicheaux novels: a hero haunted by his past (in Billy Bob's case this includes a real ghost)and a depiction of the south where the wealthy victimize the poor and you can't really tell which side law enforcement is on. This is a pretty simple story with a lot of action and plenty of bad guys. A great read.
—Doug
The slowness of my reading is partly down to this book, which took me a loooonng time to get through. Not that it isn't well written; but I had a hard time with so many people making so many bad choices, especially the protagonist. This is the first in the Billy Bob Holland series, and I'll read another just to see how in the heck Burke turns him into a series character when he seems to be burning bridges at every step. The addition of a "ghost" and the device of quoting from Billy Bob's great-grandfather's diary add some literary feeling to the story and differentiate Billy Bob a little from Burke's other character, Dave Robicheaux, who otherwise has a lot of similarities to Billy Bob (and in fact I've only read one of the Dave stories, so who knows....)I might not have finished this book at this time, except it was one of the Edgar Best Novels which I'm going through in order. It does have a strong sense of place and history both local and family, but I just hate to see people act stupid.
—Nikki
Having read many of Burke's novels I was surprised to discover that this is the first of his Billy Bob Holland series. One of the great things about Burke's novels is that they do not have to be read in any particular order. Burke is a master, a treasure, undeniably one of the best at setting a stage and a scene. About as different a writer from, say, Hemingway or Elmore Leonard as it is possible to be, in that he is lavish in description and conversation. His dialogue is never stilted, always sounds like words and sentences that would really be said by a person standing in front of you. Burke could make contraindications for medicine interesting!
—Cindy
