Heartwood

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: NOT YOUR TYPICAL 'JAMES LEE BURKE' OFFERING
Review: I did not put much stock in several of the reviews in Amazon.com but now realize I was wrong. Mr. Burke, I believe, is trying to create another character with the charisma of Robicheau, who communes with his deceased partner, but he has failed miserably. Without dragging this out too far, I will just say I was sorely disappointed. Mr. Burke kept on writing this book, however, in my humble opinion, never had a plot worthy of being built upon. Also, I don't believe small town lawyers have the time to ride all over the countryside on a horse, and no one but Michael Jackson hangs out with someone else's kids. This character and his cohorts should be quickly put to rest and lets hope Mr Burke revives "old dave". This is really not worth the money. Is he facing "burnout"?

Rating:
Summary: GOOD WRITING, BUT THE CHARACTERS WERE A LITTLE TIRED...
Review: I finished "Heartwood" about a week ago, and while Burke's writing of almost lyrical prose was well in order, the novel just didn't touch me or stay in my mind like some of his other works. Maybe it's because I've read so many of his books that all the characters are begining to seem alike. You can only warm over the same old plot lines and archetypes so many times before it gets old.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful writing but same (old) story
Review: I hate to say anything negative about James Lee BUrke because he is one of my favorite writers, but it's past time for something different. Billy Bob Holland and Dave Robicheaux are pretty much the same character, and the last few books have had the same elements over and over again. On the positive side, Mr. Burke's writing is as stunningly beautiful as ever.

Rating:
Summary: Can't relate to a 'hero' named Billy Bob
Review: I have been a big James Lee Burke fan for years, but after reading the first two books in this new series I have to say that I am really disappointed. What we have in this book is all the stiffness and aloofness of Dave R but none of the charm or local color of those Louisiana stories. This is an ugly location, an ugly story, and ugly characters to boot.

Besides, I just can't relate to a 'hero' named Billy Bob.

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: 6 stars! It may not be his best but it's pretty hard to beat
Review: I have read every book James Lee Burke has written and this man can WRITE! Whenever I pick up one of his books I make sure I have time, capital 'T' because his books are definitely of the "can't-put-it-down" genre! His writing is almost music to the eyes; stunning descriptions - you can almost smell the bayou!

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: fall of a writer
Review: I really liked Burke's writing when he first became popular. But in his later books he has spun down an ever decreasing corkscrew of vacuous "spirituality" and prissiness, combined with exceedingly vicious and sadistic scenes of violence. It's hard to write a book with no appealing characters; Burke has come close to succeeding with Heartwood. Even the protagonist is someone you would take pains to stay away from. The plot depends on the "visions" of a blind character, as if the author can't figure out how to move things along without the proverbial "and then a miracle happened."

I really wish James Lee Burke would come back again, and start writing.

Rating:
Summary: ANOTHER WINNER FOR BURKE!
Review: I should have purchased HEARTWOOD last year when it first came out in hardback, but I was so irritated with James Lee Burke for not writing a "Robicheaux" novel that I decided to get my revenge by waiting for the paperback to come out. I mean, it's bad enough to have to wait a year in between novels that have your favorite character in them, but two years is simply intolerable. Anyway, I just finished reading HEARTWOOD in paperback and consider it to be one of Burke's best novels to date. The story deals with Billy Bob Holland (first introduced in CIMARRON ROSE), who is an ex-Texas Ranger and assistant U.S. attorney, and who now practices law in his home town of Deaf Smith, Texas. When Wilbur Pickett, a down-and-out ex-rodeo bull rider and current employee of millionaire Earl Deitrich, is accused by his boss of stealing an antique watch and three hundred thousand dollars in bearer bonds, Billy Bob, against his better judgment, decides to take the case. Wilbur freely admits to taking the watch, but not the bonds. This makes Billy Bob wonder if Earl has set Wilbur up so that he can run a scam on the insurance company for the supposedly missing bonds. The question is why? Earl is rich. Why risk something like this? Billy Bob also has another problem to deal with. He is still in love with his old, teenage flame, Peggy Jean, who happens to now be married to Earl Deitrich. Billy Bob doesn't want to do anything which might hurt Peggy Jean, but at the same time, he doesn't want to see Wilbur get railroaded for something he didn't do. It isn't long, however, before Billy Bob has his hands full when he begins to suspect that there is something more going on behind the scenes than the apparent theft of the watch and bearer bonds. What he finds out may cost him his life, as well as the life of his son, Lucas. HEARTWOOD is the most complex novel Mr. Burke has written so far. There are so many hidden layers here that I haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg. Billy Bob will have to deal with gangbangers, ex-mercenaries, corruption in the local police department, the guilt he still harbors over the death of his best friend who he accidently killed, and the love he has for another man's wife. HEARTWOOD is a powerful novel of love, betrayal, greed, and murder. It is skillfully woven with characters that burst from the pages with a life all of their own. You won't want the book to end...it is that good! James Lee Burke doesn't just write an excellent novel, he gives you a "reading experience" that I wish other authors could duplicate. Needless to say, when the next "Billy Bob Holland" novel comes out, I won't wait for the paperback.