Heartwood

Rating:
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.

Rating:
Summary: San Antonio heat
Review: Billy Bob Holland, attorney, is pitted against an apparently materialistic and immoral "entrepreneur," Earl,who happens to be married to the beautiful woman who deflowered Billy Bob, years prior. Earl's son by a previous liaison, Jeff, is a chip off the old block. Tagging alongside are two Chicano "gang bangers," actually more low riders than gang bangers, Ronnie Cruise (note how he anglicized his name, maybe that's a fad in San Antonio?) and a loco guy named Ramirez who gets boxed to death later in the book. In fact, of these four, only Ronnie remains standing, with Billy Bob, when the final bell rings. There are other women, including Esmeralda Ramirez, who is variously a college student, Jeff's wife, Ronnie's girlfriend, and the girlfriend of Billy Bob's son, not in that order, however. Then there's a corrupt, racist, fat sheriff (what would a Southern town be without one?), and various "white trash" figures who cross back and forth over the criminal line as forces carry them. Well, the result of all this, in my humble opinion, is a three-star book. As others on this website have pointed out, there's a lot to wade through for the action that's delivered, maybe a little too much attention to minor detail. But does this really differ much from Robert Parker describing what his private dick had for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Or from Robert Crais telling us what the sunset in Santa Clarita looked like as the police and FBI surround an upscale single family residence housing three kidnappers? Not really. So, there's something here, but you might have to wade through some of the slower parts, skim it or skip it. Billy Bob's encounter with his deceased crime partner, his ghost, that is, is actually rather interesting, because how often do you get anything even bordering on the metaphysical in this type of fiction? Diximus.

Rating:
Summary: Burke at his top form.
Review: Billy Bob Holland, ex-Texas Ranger and now a successful lawyer agrees to defend Wibur Pickett who's accused of stealing $300,000 in bearer bonds from rich Earl Deitrich. Deitrich comes from big money and thinks nothing of riding roughshod over anyone who gets in the way of what he wants. However, that doesn't work with Billy Bob Holland who stands up to Deitrich and his equally corrupt son. Matters escalate and soon Wilbur Pickett's wife is accused of murder for defending herself against a rapist/killer sent by Earl Dietrich. Why, Billy Bob wonders, is Dietrich going to so much trouble to railroad a poor man into jail? What does Pickett have that Earl Deitrich could possibly want.

There are few writers today who can touch James Lee Burke for his use of prose, his characterization and his ear for dialog. I've been a Burke fan since reading Black Cherry Blues years ago and he never disappoints. Though he writes in the mystery genre (check out his Dave Robicheaux series of novels) the writing is literate while being entertaining. His novels are a nice change from all of the ex-cops who are now writing mysteries that, while technically correct, have no heart or soul. I would recommend this, and any James Lee Burke novel, highly.

Rating:
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.

Rating:
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.

Rating:
Summary: I'm Warming Up to Billy Bob
Review: I am a loyal Burke fan, particularly of his Robicheaux books, but "Cimarron Rose" was a slight disappointment. With time and forgiveness under my belt, I cracked open "Heartwood" and found myself swept away. The story has an actual plot, the characters have true struggles, and the narrative flows with sympathy and violence in incongruous dance.

Let's face it, few people can write with the descriptive and allegorical power of Burke. If anything, it can be overwhelming at times, although I prefer to think of it as intoxicating. Then, to keep things in check, Burke pens some of the most forceful dialogue that you'll ever run across this side of the Elmore Leonard and Dashiell Hammett. His characters are electric with their moral conflicts and emotional hangups.

"Heartwood," for me, encapsulated all the things Burke does well: the dialogue, narrative, Greek tragedy themes, and eventual redemption at a price. Yes, it harkens to the Robicheaux books, but I'm warming up to Billy Bob Holland and beginning to see him as his own fictional entity. Although this series lacks the humorous sidekick of a Clete Purcell, it hits home with powerful story and truth.

Mr. Burke, you're starting to convince me...spending time with Billy Bob and Temple Carrol has its payoffs. Do I sense a hint of romance even? I can't wait to read "Bitterroot," the next in the series.

Rating:
Summary: Come on James Lee, This is ridiculous!
Review: I have never written a negative review about a book purchased in Amazon but I am now going to make an exception. The "Billy Bob" series is unbearably overwritten, cliched, and filled with gratitious violence, endless racist references, and chapters that seem always to end with a pompous striving for fine writing. I know Burke can write but these stories are just ridiculous. The female characters are impossibly remote, almost as if they were trapped in a Western novel, the characters speak to each other with mock formality ('sir' is used even when someone is being threatened with emasculation), and about every third chapter one finds a "food" interval: tubs of chicken are devoured, buffalo steaks with blueberry ice cream are washed down with iced tea on the front porch, and for lunch tacos with an iced mug of Lone Star are slopped up at the Mexican cafe on the square. These people must weigh 400 lbs.

It's almost as if Burke said to himself: this is the way to make me 'sum' real money: testosterone threat chapters, followed by by inconclusive encounters with the athletic female private investigator and former corrections officer or with a former high school conquest now married to a rich and corrupt oil man, and then the food feasts followed by riding around the Texas Hill Country on a horse, all three mixed in with random encounters with escaped convicts, cretins borne with severe birth defects, and failed evangelists, all of whom seem to be 'river baptized.'Oh, I forgot the bottomless corruption by knuckle-dragging law enforcement officers. Sprinkled throughout, just for effect,are interludes where Billy Bob, a convert to Catholicism and former Texas Ranger who executed drug mules in Mexico and boasts of it, every now and then drops into church with his youthful sidekick. As most drug mules in real life are poor women with heroin stuffed up their privates, Billy Bob must have been steely hard as a Ranger. Now he is a lawyer who is a graduate from a night law school, perhaps St. Mary's in 'San Antone.' Oh by the way: Who says San Antone but in novels like this or in bad songs?

I grew up in San Antonio and spent a lot of time in the Hill Country and I live in the southwest today; I am sure something like these people can be scrounged up here and there and indeed anywhere, but putting "nigger" or "porch monkeys" in the mouths of the bad guys so many times or clubbings with ballpeen hammers down in the basement seems calculated to draw readers in who secretly enjoy the guilty pleasure of reading this kind of stuff. This kind of fiction is to remind us that the South won the Civil War, especially the redneck, racist, and endlessly ignorant American South. And boy hidy, does it sell!

In Heartwood, you could actually take out a good deal of this ridiculous filler: tone down the racists references because the reader gets the point, take out the food chapters, let Billy Bob actually have a regular and steady sex life like most of the adult world, cut the 'Texas Chainsaw' style violence down to a minimum, quit trying to put Southernisms into everyone's mouth every third sentence, and edit out the dud literary flights, and the upshot would be a fairly decent and interesting plot and story about a failed rodeo rider and his lawyer. But then who would buy it, I suppose Burke would say. But I would ask Burke: is making scads of money so important that you write down to people like this? You are a far, far better writer than this. How about writing a serious novel about Texas today, capturing what is happening to San Antonio and Fredericksburg and the like, given the California (or Hollywood) invasion? Even then you can throw in some clubbings, and some scenes where people are burned to death by tires filled with gasoline dropped on their heads, while their relatives watch.

Rating:
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: I'm Sure I've Read this Book Before
Review: If you've never read Burke before, this is a fine start. If you've read Burke before and have grown to love his style (as I have), this is a placeholder at best.

On the plus side, this book has everything that is a hallmark of Burke's writing-- interesting characters, hard-core insights and solid writing. Billy Bob Holland is as good a character as there is if you've never heard of a certain New Iberian cop before. All the other characters in this book are compelling as well.

Unfortunately, this is just rehashed stuff from previous Burke books. There is nothing new here and I suffered serious deja vu to "Burning Angel," right down to the big house going up in flame at the end.

I think it's great that Burke put aside his very successful Louisiana line of books to try to do something different. I just wished that it was indeed something different. A change of pace would be nice and I'm sure a man of Burke's talents could have developed something unique.

But just to be clear, a below-average Burke book is clearly a better read than 90% of the stuff out there.

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.