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Title: Heartwood by James Lee Burke ISBN: 0-440-22401-2 Publisher: Island Books Pub. Date: 11 July, 2000 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.43 (46 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A cerebral departure in Burke's storytelling style
Comment: 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: 5
Summary: A wonderful book by the best writer of this genre today.
Comment: Somehow, and it's largely through his terrific prose style, Burke manages to write "mysteries" that transcend the genre and even get the reader to accept a nonrational aspect to books that depend on reason. As everyone has noted, this is the second of his "Texas" books, Burke having left, at least temporarily, Dave Robichaux and Louisiana behind. Protagonist Billy Bob Holland, exRanger and present attorney in a wonderfully crafted small Texas town is, typical Burke hero, caught in a present but captive of his past, in this book an early (VERY early)love for a woman now married to the rich man of the town, who is also a scoundral of the worst kind. But Holland is also captive of his more recent past, in which he feels responsible for the death of his best friend. The plot unfolds against a backdrop of those feelings, the involvement of Billy Bob's own son, as well as others of that generation, wonderful odd characters pure Texan in nature, and requisite death and danger.
But the aspect of the book which impresses me most is that Burke manages to get the reader not merely to accept but to participate in conversations that Holland holds with his dead friend. It's a gambit that could fail utterly, become silly and sentimental. But Burke pulls it off, and the result is much the same as when he used this quite effectively in Into the Electric Mist with the Confederate Dead, to me the best of the Robichaux books. This is a fine book, the best in this genre I've read in a very long time.
Rating: 4
Summary: I See A Movie Franchise Coming...
Comment: ...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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Title: Cimarron Rose by James Lee Burke ISBN: 0786889306 Publisher: Hyperion Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Burning Angel by James Lee Burke ISBN: 0786889047 Publisher: Hyperion Pub. Date: 01 August, 1996 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: A Stained White Radiance by James L. Burke ISBN: 0380720477 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 01 May, 1993 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: Cadillac Jukebox Mass Market by James Lee Burke ISBN: 0786889187 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Dixie City Jam by James Lee Burke ISBN: 0786889004 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 1995 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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