Heartwood (Billy Bob Boy Howdy)

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Summary: I See A Movie Franchise Coming...
Review: ...Billy Bob Holland reminds me of the southern Sheriff played by Bill Paxton in "One False Move" or Chris Cooper as the Texas Ranger in "Lone Star". Or Gary Cooper in those 40's/50's westerns.

'Course, in Lee Burke's Texas, murders and the overall evil men do take on quite a different flavor. *Quite* a different flavor. A Latin gang member is murdered by a lethal drug which has been punched in his face during a so called friendly boxing spar. A wildcatter initally accused of taking bearer bonds--Billy Bob's client--finds his mother's body exhumed and in his pick-up truck out in a dark and dreary field; this is a threat from Big Earl Dietrich to comply with some kind of land development deal with a promise of big resources...he wants IN, but Deitrich would rather just muscle his way in. The wildcatter is married to a blind Indian spiritlifter, who murders an intruder to her home so efficiently and thoroughly it seems like it was done in a mode other than self defense. The Big guy's son seems to have some scandalous problems with his sexuality and Billy Bob has somehow gotten a dose of a rare Asian jungle poison. Add to the mix some insane prison escapees, an able assistant, his son Lucas, and a lil fishing buddy and you have quite an intriging stage for mystery.

Billy Bob Holland himself keeps hearing voices, seeing visions inspired by his dead Rangers partner, LQ Navarro. Whoooo-boy! Would this be a wild movie for a director to take on!

My take on why Lee Burke goes to extremes on describing Deaf Smith and parts surrounding is that it makes his mystery more realistic and if he describes every iota of this countryside-- how it is hot on certain days, rainy on others, what kind of vegetation clings around, if there's a quicksandy, mildewy swamp around---maybe that can help rationalise why each character has his own strange way. An environment that varied and extreme is likely to harbor varied and extreme individuals.

Anyway, this is a great mystery with superb setting and mood. And its so intense and real you can feel the horseflies whizzing at the back of your neck.

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Summary: A cerebral departure in Burke's storytelling style
Review: Burke fans are used to in your face violence and sex spicing the always anxious, but simple plotlines. Heartwood isn't as graphic, but the feelings of the characters resonate with most of us who have made a big mistake or really blown it but tried to keep on keeping on. The multiple characters' hurts and wounds are implied, leaving out the heavy handed violence and sweaty couplings. Nothing is gratuitous in Heartwood. The reader has probably seen and experienced the cultural mismatches. Although, set in the beautiful hill country of Texas, Heartwood could be about anyplace. Billy Bob Holland is more believable than Dave Robicheaux. After only two novels in the Billy Bob series, readers familiar with Burke's character development can only hope the next book is another Billy Bob Holland. The ghost of L.Q. Navarro is a Greek chorus facility making the book a haunting reminder of every tragedy any of us have caused, never minding how innocent and well intended. Heartwood is an advancement in the James Lee Burke repertoire of fine writing. I lingered over the pages not wanting the book to end. When you put it down after the last paragraph, you will probably look out the window and just think about yourself.

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Summary: Brillant
Review: Heartwood James Lee Burke Doubleday 1999 ISBN 0385488432 H.C. Mystery

This is the 2nd book centered around Billy Bob Holland. The 1st was Cimarron Rose in 1997.

When Holland takes on the defense of Wilbur Pickett, who has had allot of bad luck in his past, now finds himself accused of stealing bearer bonds from the rich Dietrichs family. Holland is going up against Dietrichs whom he does not care for because Dietrich has made a fortune running over people and tainting anyone who stands in his way. Plus Holland can not forget the passion he fills for Dietrichs wife Peggy Jean. James Burke makes you see the town and characters in your mind so clearly as he describes them. The only issue I had with this book is James Burke talks of rain on 25 pages of this book, but I find that hard to believe because this book takes place in Texas Hill country, and Texans know that it hardly ever rains in the Texas Hill country. Other than that this book is a winner. Burke is a master at setting mood, laying in atmosphere, fall with quirky raunchy language that befits Texas. I am looking forward to the next installment of Billy Bob Holland.

A brilliant novel of crime from the two-time Edgar Award winner, Gold Dagger award winner and New York Times Bestseller author of several books.

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Summary: James Lee Burke and Billy Bob Holland Are Back In Top Form
Review: I have to say that I was somewhat suspicious of James Lee Burke after having read CIMARRON ROSE. His new main character, Billy Bob Holland seemed to be just a Texas version of Dave Robicheaux and Deaf Smith, Texas was a poor substitute for New Iberia, LA. But I stuck with the book and overcame my intitial reservations. While the similarities are there and very palpable, if one has never read the Robicheaux series, then the Billy Bob character is as new and alive as any character readers are likely to meet in popular fiction today.

The second installment in this parallel series is called HEARTWOOD and in it, James Lee Burke continues to delve into the psyche of Billy Bob Holland and the lives of various miscreants he comes across in the small Texas town he calls home. HEARTWOOD does not differ from previous JLB offerings. The prose is alternatively lush and spare. The descriptions of places and people are without peer. Whether it is New Iberia, LA or Deaf Smith, TX, James Lee Burke's descriptions are so well constructed that I can imagine myself in either location and viewing the action of the story as it takes place around me. That is a technique that Burke is a master of and he retains that stylistic approach in HEARTWOOD.

It would be easy to say that HEARTWOOD is a continuation of CIMARRON ROSE and that Burke is just expanding on that novel's previously offered theme. Some readers might find it so. But what Burke does so well is explore classic American literary themes. In these two books, it happens to be the struggles between the haves and the have-nots; the rich and the poor. Deaf Smith, Texas is a study in contrasts. There are those who have money, creature comforts, status, prestige and power and then, there are those who have none of the above. To contrast the two ends of the spectrum, Burke even geographically juxtaposes the groups by placing them at opposite sides of the town.

Burke is and always will be a master at creating characters antagonistic to the order of the rest of society. In HEARTWOOD,that person is Earl Deitrich, a man who has made his life's work (and fortune) by stomping people who get in his way. His wealth has bought him power and he is a man totally unafraid to use that power to whatever advantage he thinks he is entitled to.

As in the Robicheaux novels, the main character, Billy Bob Holland has a past that he is trying to live down. Once a Texas Ranger and Assistant U.S. Attorney, Billy Bob has taken to defending the lesser elements of society; they are the people who violate the law as easily as the rest of us turn on a light. Many are people who are criminals through the accident of not having enough common sense to realize that what they are doing violates all normal standards. Billy Bob and Burke show a world weary sympathy for the folks in this category and it is another feature continued from previous books.

Burke always provides a paradox in his novels, however. While Billy Bob may defend the sociopathic members of society, Burke points out that the well-to-do are not without their own monsters, too. Scions of powerful fathers tend not to be nice people in the books of James Lee Burke and Earl Deitrich's son Jeff is no different.

Burke always supplies his readers with a large cast of characters to keep track of. But what he does so well and continues here is that he delivers well-realized people. The good folks are the ones you root for. The vile ones are the folks you hope he kills off. Of course, that doesn't always happen either, so there are few (if any) plot gimmicks that would make these stories all too tidy.

Readers of the Robicheaux series root for Dave, Bootsie, Alafair, Batist and Helen. In HEARTWOOD, readers will root for Billy Bob, Lucas Smothers, Pete and Temple Carroll. It was nice being able to transfer sympathetic feelings for another set of characters in this new location.

Burke also retains one of the features from CIMARRON ROSE that I found annoying and that was the use of conversations between Billy Bob and his dead partner L.Q. Novarro. While not as noticeable as in CIMARRON ROSE, they are still there and somehow this time, I found them less intrusive and annoying. I think that Burke retained them and uses them to remind his readers that we all have little foibles that haunt us from time to time and sometimes these hang-ups are mysterious to others. They are however, what make each of us individuals. Billy Bob is a flawed human being just like the rest of us. He is looking for respite and redemption but the crazies in Deaf Smith just won't give him a chance.

I still think that James Lee Burke is showing us the less attractive side of America. HEARTWOOD is no different than his previous works in that regard. What it does do exceedingly well is explore a man's limits and his sense of personal honor and integrity. Just like Dave Robicheaux, Billy Bob Holland is a man of action but no longer one of barely restrained violence. While I once thought they were two sides of the same coin, I now realize that I must modify my opinion. Dave and Billy Bob are more cousins than they are brothers. The brotherly part only comes to the fore when th reader realizes that both man stand for doing the right thing.

The Billy Bob Holland novels ARE NOT the Dave Robicheaux stories despite the similarities and the imitative plot devices. I recommend that readers of HEARTWOOD forget Dave Robicheaux and read this book as if they had never read any others by JLB. When you do, you'll realize that James Lee Burke really is at the top of his form and is the undisputed master of this genre.

Read HEARTWOOD as a stand alone and judge it on that basis. If you do that, without comparing this series to the one containing Dave Robicheaux, then I think you'll find this to be a most enjoyable read.

Paul Connors

Rating:
Summary: A Fine New Series
Review: James Lee Burke looks like a cowboy or a roustabout, but writes like a poet. His love of place is evident in his novels, whether they are set in New Iberia, Lousiana, or Deaf Smith, Texas. He also displays his affection for life's underdogs, and returns again and again to the theme of the abuse of power by the priviliged few.

In this book, "Heartwood" refers to a type of tree whose core increases in strength as the tree grows, until it is so strong that saws cannot cut through it. Burke's protagonist, Billy Bob Holland, is on his way to becoming a man with a center of heartwood. He has a tragedy in his past, an illegitimate son who is also on his way to becoming a fine and courageous man, and an idealized love for the town beauty, Peggy Jean Dietrich. Peggy Jean is married to the rich, powerful and ruthless, Earl Dietrich. When Earl sets up the naive dreamer, Wilbur Pickett, as the thief who stole a fortune in bearer bonds from his home, Billy Bob takes his case. That's when all hell breaks loose in Deaf Smith, Texas!

The plot is densly populated and complex. Burke has always infused his tales with a lot of mysticism, and this one is no exception. Wilbur's blind wife is gifted with second sight, and Billy Bob has visions of the man who was his partner when both were Texas Rangers. Burke writes of gangbangers, drug dealers, crooked cops and the overpriviliged sons and daughters of the wealthy. This book is beautifully written and peopled with fully realized characters, admirable, evil, and all the degrees in between. I have not yet read "Cimmaron Rose", but I am looking forward to another visit to Deaf Smith, Texas.

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Summary: Heartwood, A Review
Review: Read the first book in the series first or you will find yourself slightly distracted, not because this book does not stand strongly on its own, but because the passing references to events of the first book eventually make you want to run out and read it. Burke does not reintroduce fascinating characters so much as he picks up with them where he left off, even if they happen to be ghosts. Burke is one of those authors who are able to create characters and stories with layers of doubt, ambiguity, and uncertainty about who and what is ultimately right and wrong, and then keep you reading to find out.

The center of the moral conflict in this novel starts when the richest man in the town of Deaf Smith, Earl Deitrich accuses Wilbur Pickett of stealing. Wilbur is one of the town's more colorful characters, a modern day cowboy that could stay on the meanest bull on the rodeo circuit seven seconds, but according to his momma "couldn't grow germs on the bottom of his shoe." Ex-Texas Ranger and lawyer Billy Bob Holland is drawn in partly because he sense injustice in the way Earl Deitrich flexes his muscles to both show who owns the town of Deaf Smith and who owns Peggy Jean, an icon from Billy Bob's early manhood.

Burke's magic is bring people and places to life with equal clarity. His clear readable prose hides the depths of the waters he charts in his good guy/bad guy novels. Warning, once you read one Burke novel, you will be a fan.

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Summary: Dave Or Billy Bob: Take Your Pick
Review: To paraphrase former Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen, I knew Dave Robicheaux (I've read all the books and much of Burke's other work) and Billy Bob, you're no Dave Robicheaux. Or maybe you are--and that's part of the problem. In Dave's books, all the lawyers are corrupt scum; in Billy Bob's, it's all the cops. Otherwise, when I read Billy's Bob's first person accounts, I might as well be reading Dave's thoughts and words. Good and bad; bad and good. Burke is a writer of LITERATURE, not just a mystery writer (of course, he was a writer of literature whose books didn't sell, which is why he turned to mysteries). However, he has single-handedly re-invented the crime genre in the '90s. I find a kind of comfort and salvation in the early Dave Robicheaux books (Black Cherry Blues, A Morning For Flamingos--still my favorites) that comes in only the best literature. Thank you, James Lee Burke, for writing this series. But alas, it seems to me that you've become a victim of your own winning formula, and are trying to top yourself each time out with more complicated plots, the way each James Bond movie tried to be better than the one before. Don't play this game, podna; it may make you big bucks but I know you can do better than this. Give us one plot, not five; one memorable bad guy, not three or four unmemorable ones. There's some gorgeous writing in the new book that your late cousin, Andre Dubus, would admire. But stick with what makes literature ignite--character, not plot. Until we get a Billy Bob Holland novel that's character as opposed to plot-driven, this series will never have the same drama, suspense, or emotional resonance of the earlier work.