HEARTWOOD - Softcover

Burke, James Lee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440295718 ISBN 13: 9780440295716

Publisher: Dell, 1999

Synopsis

Crime fiction - Billy Bob tries to live his life like the heartwood, growing from the heart out, but when his friend and neighbour is framed for the theft of $30,000 worth of bail bonds from the local rich dirt Earl Dietrich, things start to turn increasingly murky and the death toll begins to rise.

About this title

Review:

Whether he's writing about the Louisiana Bayou Country (in his Dave Robicheaux books) or the Texas hill towns around Austin (in his series about former Texas ranger Billy Bob Holland), James Lee Burke has deep roots in the American soil that link him to some of the great adventure writers of the past such as Jack London and Mark Twain. Like them, Burke writes novels illustrating how failure shapes man much more than success does.

Central to Burke's second Billy Bob novel (Cimarron Rose was his first) is Wilbur Pickett. Wilbur had a brief moment of glory as a rodeo cowboy before sliding into a downward cycle of luckless enterprises. He ends up labouring for a wealthy family, the Dietrichs, in the Texas town of Deaf Smith. The Dietrichs accuse Wilbur of stealing some bearer bonds, and Billy Bob--now a defence lawyer--reluctantly take his case. He is hesitant (because he idolises Peggy Jean Dietrich), and for good reason: Billy Bob discovers that her husband Earl may be involved in shady, even violent, business practices.

Other ghosts from the past also haunt Billy Bob: he accidentally killed his former partner on a drugs raid in Mexico and still hears his voice. And then there's Holland's illegitimate son Lucas, who is growing up with problems of his own. The weight of all this back-story might overwhelm a lesser writer, but Burke manages to make it seem as natural as the soft wind that stirs the tumbleweed in the town of Deaf Smith. --Dick Adler

Review:

James Lee Burke is the heavyweight champ, a great American novelist whose work, taken individually or as a whole, is unsurpassed. (Michael Connelly)

A gorgeous prose stylist. (Stephen King)

Richly deserves to be described now as one of the finest crime writers America has ever produced. (Daily Mail)

There are not many crime writers about whom one might invoke the name of Zola for comparison, but Burke is very much in that territory. His stamping ground is the Gulf coast, and one of the great strengths of his work has always been the atmospheric background of New Orleans and the bayous. His big, baggy novels are always about much more than the mechanics of the detective plot; his real subject, like the French master, is the human condition, seen in every situation of society. (Independent)

The king of Southern noir. (Daily Mirror)

His lyrical prose, his deep understanding of what makes people behave as they do, and his control of plot and pace are masterly. (Sunday Telegraph)

One of the finest American writers. (Guardian)

When it comes to literate, pungently characterised American crime writing, James Lee Burke has few peers. (Daily Express)

Lee Burke's thrillers are like no one else's, Will Patton declaims the words as thought they are poetry, amid bouts of slide guitar. (EVENING STANDARD)

About this edition

• Publisher: Dell
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0440295718
• ISBN 13: 9780440295716
• Binding: Perfect Paperback