The second entry in Burke's new Billy Bob Holland series, following Cimarron Rose (1997), exhibits many of the author's strengths: lyrical prose, an elegiac tone, and a complex, tormented hero whose attraction to violence surfaces under the guise of protecting the weak. This time Billy Bob, Texas Ranger turned lawyer in Deaf Smith, Texas, tangles with a classic Burke villain: the rich guy whose polished veneer masks a lifetime of brutality. Complicating matters are Billy Bob's still-smoldering attraction to the rich guy's wife and a West Side Storylike rivalry between Mexican American gang members and the dissolute sons of the town's wealthy class. "You live with ghosts," Billy Bob's friend tells him, referring to his inability to let the past go. Yes, he does, and so does Burke, whose mingling of past and present usually gives his books a mythic power and a tragic scope. This time, however, the ghosts get in the way: too many echoes to previous books, both Cimarron Rose and the Dave Robicheaux novels, and too much similarity between heroes dull the emotional impact of the story rather than enhancing it. Still, this is a strong novel on its own terms, if a mild disappointment to longtime Burke fans. --Bill Ott

Burke's newer series hero, Billy Bob Holland (Cimarron Rose, 1997), could have been separated at birth from Burke's long-time protagonist, ex-New Orleans cop Dave Robicheaux. Although Holland is a lawyer in the rolling hill country north of Austin, Tex., he shares Robicheaux's sensibilities: he's brutally honest, haunted by his past, kind to children, protective of the underdog, a lover of the beautiful country in which he lives. Most of Burke's villains are arrogant millionaires; here, the dark heart belongs to Earl Deitrich from Houston, who spread his money around the town of Deaf Smith and married the prettiest girl, Peggy Jean Murphy, Holland's high-school sweetheart. Deitrich's pervasive evil extends from threatening Kippy Jo and Wilbur Pickett into ceding him the oil-rich Wyoming property Kippy Jo inherited from her grandfather, to arranging the false arrest of a business victim, to arson and murder in an alliance with a San Antonio Chicano gang. Meanwhile, Deitrich's insolent son Jeff elopes with the sister of the gang's leader; their breakup places Holland's own, illegitimate son in peril. Despite a circuitous, often confusing plot, the novel compels for its lush portrayal of exquisite countryside; its beautifully composed, mood-setting scenes that pace the action; and the leisurely introductions that give dimension to the many eccentric characters. At one point, a Deitrich victim sums up a consistent Burke theme: "Law punishes a poor man. Rich man don't have to account." Holland agrees, but succeeds in turning the tables in this rewarding novel. Major ad/promo; author tour. (Aug.) FYI: Cimarron Rose won the 1997 Edgar Award for Best Novel. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Burke's Billy Bob Holland is back, defending loser Wilbur Pickett against accusations of having stolen from powerful Earl Dietrich. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A second rangy Texas crime opera (Cimarron Rose, 1997) from the Edgar-winning chronicler of bayou detective Dave Robicheaux. This time out, Deaf Smith attorney Billy Bob Holland is handling what looks like a little case: the defense of Wilbur Pickett, a resounding flop who's been accused by local Croesus Earl Deitrich of stealing $300,000 in bearer bonds and an antique watch. But nothing ever stays little for long in Burke's monumental novels, and this case simmers with rumors that the watch rightly belonged to rolling-stone Skyler Doolittle; that Deitrich accountant Max Greenbaum was at the point of challenging his boss's story when he was killed by gang-bangers in Houston; and that the power behind the dangerous games of a Deaf Smith gang called the Purple Hearts is Deitrich and his gay-bashing gay son Jeff. Billy Bob, still haunted by his high-school fling with Deitrich's wife Peggy Jean'an affair she seems indecently eager to resume'can't swing a dead cat around his homestead without hitting other predators and the little people they prey on. No sooner has rascally Deitrich pilot Bubba Grimes offered to give evidence against Deitrich than he breaks into the home of Wilbur's blind wife Kippy Jo, and she's facing murder charges for shooting him. And when Skyler, hustled into custody by another Deitrich plot, takes it on the lam, his escape ensnares both the fellow-convict who helps him and the sadistic deputy bent on tracking him down. It's all perfectly familiar to Burke's legion of fans, of course'from the ancient romance with the spoiled rich girl to the corruption of wealth and power to the violence seething inside gang-bangers and heroes alike'and it's all done to a turn. Forget Raymond Chandler. The obsessive return of Burke's ambitious themes, together with his characters' inexhaustible capacity for courage, tenderness, and rage, makes him the Faulkner of the American crime novel. (Author tour)