[book_talk] book review - James Lee Burke
- From: "Bonnie L. Sherrell" <blslarner@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Blind Chit Chat" <Blind-Chit-Chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Books for the Blind" <Books4theblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Blind Book Lovers Cafe" <bblc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Book Talk" <book_talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 19:22:59 -0800
_Cimarrron Rose_
by James Lee Burke
read by Tom Stechschulte
Billy Bob Holland has had many experiences in his life that cause him
grief. When he was younger he fell in love with another man's wife,
and when she left her illiterate and often brutish husband, Billy Bob
tried to help her find a safe place where she might dwell until she
could get a divorce, and found himself staying with her for a time.
But her husband Vernon Smothers found her and brought her back to Deaf
Smith, where he lived as a sharecropper on part of Billy Bob's land.
Some months after her return home, she gave birth to a son that all had
reason to believe was conceived during the time Billy Bob and she had
spent together. When she died accidently, Vernon Smothers did his best
to raise the boy, but he was quite as apt to smack the child as to
nurture him.
Deaf Smith, Texas, has quite a discrepancy between rich and poor.
Bunny Vogel, a former football star, is accepted by the rich kids in
spite of the poverty into which he was born, but Lucas Smothers is
often the butt of cruel jokes played upon him by the likes of Darrel
Jantz. When Rosemary Haslett, once Bunny's girlfriend, is found dead
after a date with Lucas, Lucas is charged with her murder, and Billy
Bob becomes his defense lawyer.
But the citizens of Deaf Smith appear intent on scapegoating Lucas no
matter what, and the appearance of a group of shady characters such as
Garland Moon and Felix Ringo in the town adds unwanted complications.
Moon is claiming to be an illegitimate son of the Hollands, perhaps
Billy Bob's own brother! He is also a sociopath capable of
unfathomable evil. As for Ringo--in spite of his claims to be a
Mexican anti-drug agent, Billy Bob has reason to know the man was once
a drug mule that Billy Bob and his late partner L. Q. Navarro tried to
take out of circulation, before Billy Bob himself accidently killed
Navarro.
Deaf Smith has too many secrets, and the exposure of them is racking up
a death toll that Deaf Smith is finding harder and harder to fathom.
Will Billy Bob be able to save the young man who is most likely his own
son from prison as a murderer? And who else is going to suffer as a
result of Billy Bob's mistakes?
I don't think that Tom Stechschulte is quite as good at reading Burke's
work as is Will Patton, who's read most of the author's books to date,
but as the book progressed he got better in his characterizations,
although he appears to make Lucas a bit more hickish than I've ever
pictured him in the later books in the Billy Bob series. The story
itself is well done, and the characters well developed. One thing that
I appreciated is that although Billy Bob and Darrel's parents don't get
along well in most of their encounters once Billy Bob becomes convinced
that somehow their son is involved in what happened to Rosemary, the
encounters don't appear to be as irrationally inconsistent in nature as
one sees in the Dave Robicheaux series.
This is the third book I've read in this series, and the first book in
which Billy Bob and Temple Holland appear. Definitely a book worth
reading, with plenty of action and giving an excellent flavor of the
area in which the action is set.
Bonnie L. Sherrell
Teacher at Large
"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise
cannot see all ends." LOTR
"Don't go where I can't follow."
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