Bitterroot - Softcover

Burke, James Lee (Author)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0752847961 ISBN 13: 9780752847962

Publisher: Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Lt, 2002

Synopsis

America's finest crime writer sends hero Billy Bob Holland deep into Montana - paradise to some, to others a savage wilderness...

When Billy Bob Holland visits his old friend Doc Voss, he finds himself caught up in a horrific tragedy. Doc's daughter has been brutally attacked by bikers, and the ringleader, Lamar Ellison, walks free when the DNA samples 'get lost'. Then Ellison is burned alive and Doc is arrested.

So much for Billy Bob's vacation - Doc needs a lawyer, and fast. And that's not all. Newly released killer Wyatt Dixon has tracked Billy Bob to Montana, bent on avenging the death of his sister for which he holds Billy Bob responsible. And Wyatt is only one thread of a tangled web of evil that includes neo-Nazi militias, gold miners who tip cyanide into the rivers, a paedophile ring, and the Mob. As the corpses of the guilty and innocent pile up, Billy Bob stands alone.

Praise for one of the great American crime writers, James Lee Burke:

'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

Fans of Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly and Don Winslow will love James Lee Burke:

Billy Bob Holland Series

1. Cimarron Rose
2. Heartwood
3. Bitterroot
4. In The Moon of Red Ponies

Dave Robicheaux Series

1. The Neon Rain
2. Heaven's Prisoners
3. Black Cherry Blues
4. A Morning for Flamingos
5. A Stained White Radiance
6. In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead
7. Dixie City Jam
8. Burning Angel
9. Cadillac Jukebox
10. Sunset Limited
11. Purple Cane Road
12. Jolie Blon's Bounce
13. Last Car to Elysian Fields
14. Crusader's Cross
15. Pegasus Descending
16. The Tin Roof Blowdown
17. Swan Peak
18. The Glass Rainbow
19. Creole Belle
20. Light of the World
21. Robicheaux

Hackberry Holland Series

1. Lay Down My Sword and Shield
2. Rain Gods
3. Feast Day of Fools
4. House of the Rising Sun

* Each James Lee Burke novel can be read as a standalone or in series order *

About this title

Product Description

America's finest crime writer pitches his hero Billy Bob Holland deep into Montana - paradise to some, to others a savage wilderness.

Review

Set in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana, home to celebrities seeking to escape the pressures of public life, as well as to xenophobes dedicated to establishing a bulkhead of patriotic paranoia, James Lee Burke's Bitterroot features Billy Bob Holland, former Texas Ranger and now a Texas-based lawyer, who has come to Big Sky country for some fishing and ends up helping out an old friend in trouble.

Former Texas Rangers are suckers for old friends in distress, so when Vietnam vet and recent widower Doc Voss calls lawyer Billy Bob Holland from Montana with an apparently innocent invitation, Billy Bob packs up and goes in hopes that his "own ghosts [don't] cross state lines".

Doc manages to alienate everyone in town, including mining interests on the Blackfoot River; a drug-running biker gang, an enclave of white supremacists and the feds, who don't want anything interfering with their pursuit of both Hinkel and Molinari. After Doc's daughter is brutally raped by three of the bikers (who are then brutally murdered), Holland must try to clear his friend of suspicion. As he ferrets through a tangled web of coincidence and connection, he risks losing everything and everyone dear to him.

James Lee Burke's prose alternately sparkles with a perverse insouciance and glows with a muted intensity, and the author's capacity to add depth to his characters with a few well-chosen phrases is striking.

Is the Billy Bob Holland series (three novels and counting) just Robicheaux Redux? The ex-Texas Ranger is, as either man might admit, the spitting image of Dave Robicheaux, Burke's Louisiana PI: simultaneously rugged and rage-filled, chivalrous and callow, debonair and disturbing. And like the Robicheaux series, the Holland novels drift effortlessly among genres: regional writing, gritty noir, classic PI. You can cavil that Burke is repeating himself--or you can rejoice that Burke is continuing to enlarge his pool of intense, lyrical crime novels. --Kelly Flynn

About this edition

• Publisher: Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Lt
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0752847961
• ISBN 13: 9780752847962
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384