Billy Bob Holland, the protagonist of Cimarron Rose, is an attorney in the dusty Texas town of Deaf Smith. An ex-Texas Ranger (cop, not ball-player) who mistakenly killed his partner during a drug bust, Holland is jolted from his brooding when his estranged illegitimate son is accused of the rape and murder of a party girl. He takes the case, of course, and things get complicated mighty quick. On a hunch only a father could believe, Holland is sure his son is being railroaded. Doggedly pursuing the truth, he runs afoul of sadistic cops, a powerful family, and the euphoniously-named Garland T. Moon, a feral thug with something to hide. Luckily, the folks on his team are just as tough. Burke's book isn't gritty realism--Holland's dead partner visits him often--but the characters ring true in a weird way. They are quirky and appealing, and even the criminals make good company while the whodunit unfolds.


From Library Journal
Deaf Smith, Texas, is a small town like any other. It also hides many secrets. When Billy Bob Holland finds himself defending Lucas Smothers against a charge of murder, he finds himself exposing many of these secrets in an effort to save Lucas, the son he has never acknowledged. As Holland examines the murder, he stumbles upon a DEA investigation of the town and its law enforcement officials. He also finds himself having to deal with the secrets in his own past, including the death of his partner, the loss of his father and his father's role in the life of a serial killer now in Deaf Smith, and the realization that he can deal with the anger that is within him and not let it beat him. Author Burke (Dixie City Jam, Audio Reviews, LJ 2/15/94) is a beautiful writer. His descriptions are glorious. One can almost see the ghost of Billy Bob's partner, feel the Texas thunderstorms, and see the town of Deaf Smith. However, this beautiful prose at times gets in the way of the story. Will Patton is a good reader and helps to bring the character of Billy Bob to life. Recommended for collections where Burke is popular and for large mystery collections.?Danna Bell-Russel, Natl. Equal Justice Lib., American Univ., Washington, D.C.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio
With his tangled family roots and the deep psychic scars he carries from earlier adventures as a Houston cop and a Texas Ranger, Billy Bob already looks like a mythic hero in the making.


From AudioFile
James Lee Burke introduces Bill Bob Holland, ex-Texas Ranger turned small-town lawyer in West Texas. Much like Dave Robicheaux of Burke's Louisiana series, Holland marches to the tunes of his personal ghosts. Narrator Will Patton is well versed in portraying Burke's characters--each demanding some shade of evil or perversity. Patton is truly brilliant at making each of the cops, jail guards and criminals sound scary. Using pacing and a variety of slow Texas drawls, Patton barely mitigates the pace of unrelenting violence. He plays the scenes with the disturbing clarity that Burke's sharp-edged style demands. It's not pretty, but Patton does a chilling job. R.F.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Before Burke launched his Dave Robicheaux series, he wrote several hard-edged, proletarian novels set in and around Texas. Now he returns to that setting for a new series that stars a Robicheaux-like character in the hardscrabble world of Deaf Smith, Texas. Billy Bob Holland, former Texas Ranger turned lawyer, is a man with a past, and when a teenager is arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, that past makes its presence felt. Billy Bob agrees to defend Lucas Smothers, knowing that the boy is his illegitimate son and realizing that the trial will bring pain to both of them. Defending his son takes Billy Bob in some other directions he isn't quite prepared to go: toward a coming to terms with his own (Robicheaux-like) propensity for violence; toward a confrontation with the intolerant, hate-filled citizenry of Deaf Smith; and deep into the past, there to revisit his great-grandfather Sam, "who fought whiskey and Indians and cow thieves and . . . watched gully washers or dry lightning spook his herds over half of Oklahoma Territory." By moving west, Burke has given new dimension to his familiar theme of a rugged individual in conflict with himself. Issues of independence versus community have long reigned supreme in the literature of the West, and Burke draws on that tradition effectively, contrasting the dusty desperation of an intolerant Texas town with the pioneer spirit of Billy Bob's ancestors. Both similar to and different from the Robicheaux books, Cimarron Rose is a fine, multitextured novel, full of Burke's lilting, elegiac prose and unflinching in its portrait of the human heart in turmoil. Bill Ott


From Kirkus Reviews
You can take Burke out of Louisiana's Iberia Parish (Cadillac Jukebox, 1996, etc.), but you can't take Iberia out of Burke, as this tangled tale of Texas murder and memory makes wondrously clear. Without his r‚sum‚ in front of you, you could never tell lawyer Billy Bob Holland (ex-Texas Ranger, ex-assistant US attorney) from Iberia's Dave Robicheaux. Billy Bob's passion for justice, like Dave's, is constantly battling the other passions that have engendered an unacknowledged son, Lucas Smothers, and that keep sending him into battle armed with more than his legal briefs. When Lucas is arrested for raping and murdering Roseanne Hazlitt, there's no question but that Billy Bob will defend him; the only question is how far he'll go. Ranged against Lucas are dyslexic, psychopathic Darl Vanzandt, the spoiled son of a wealthy East End millionaire; Garland T. Moon, the rabid jailmate whose off-the-record confession to a California murder Lucas overhears from his neighboring cell; and just about every law enforcement official resident in Deaf Smith, Texas, from smarmy jailer Harley Sweet to Mexican drug agent Felix Ringo. Burke saves Lucas's murder trial for the end, but the real action takes place long beforehand, as Billy Bob goes head to head with Ringo, Moon, the Vanzandts, two sheriffs, and his own defense witnesses. Each confrontation, as in the Dave Robicheaux novels, is engorged by the hero's overwhelming memories of his own family's involvement with evil: his father's violent death; his great- grandfather's spectral romance with Jennie, the outlaw Rose of Cimarron; and his own accidental killing of L.Q. Navarro, the Ranger partner who haunts his daily rounds as if he hadn't been dead 11 years. Other riddles about the past keep the pot boiling so furiously it's a wonder Burke can get it to the table. All the roiling intensity of the Robicheaux stories. Even the ragged ends make other mystery novels look anemic. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Texas attorney and former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland has many secrets in his dark past. Among them is Vernon Smothers's son Lucas, a now-teenaged boy about whom only Vernon and Billy Bob know the truth. Lucas is really Billy Bob's illegitimate son, and when Lucas is arrested for murder, Billy Bob knows that he has no choice but to confront the past and serve as the boy's criminal attorney. Billy Bob's son is a country musician, abused by his stepfather, and haunted by the possibility that he killed his girlfriend, who was thought to be pregnant. But Billy Bob knows the propensity of the town, Deaf Smith, Texas, to make scapegoats out of the innocent and to exploit and sexually use those who are without power. The East Enders, the children of the wealthy and effete, were with Billy Bob's son and the murdered girl the night of her death. During Lucas's trial, Billy Bob realizes that he will have to bring injury upon Lucas as well as himself in order to save his son. And as a result, Billy Bob incurs enemies that are far more dangerous than any he faced as a Texas Ranger.

SYNOPSIS

James Lee Burke is best known as the creator and author of the popular series about Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux. His 1988 novel, Heaven's Prisoners, was made into a feature film last year that starred Alec Baldwin and Teri Hatcher. The latest Burke novel, Cimarron Rose, is his first novel since the publication of the highly popular Cadillac Jukebox, which was his third straight novel on the New York Times bestseller list. Burke's latest book departs from the bayous of Louisiana and marks a new direction as it explodes with all the beauty, power, and violence of the American West.

Dedicated James Lee Burke fans will be delighted to find that Cimarron Rose is written with the same edgy style that has brought his previous Dave Robicheaux books to the forefront of American crime fiction. He delivers a masterful novel of class warfare and self-destructive youth culture in a new setting with a whole new cast of characters. As Publishers Weekly says in its starred review, "Billy Bob Holland isn't Dave Robicheaux; and the dusty Texas town of Deaf Smith where Billy Bob, a former Texas Ranger, now practices law isn't the fetid bayous of Louisiana. But Burke, who can spin a multifaceted tale like few others in the business, continues to be an expert at portraying the psychic pain of a manly hero."

Texas attorney Billy Bob Holland, a former Texas Ranger, has many skeletons in his closet. One of these involves Vernon Smother's son Lucas, now a teenage boy about whom only Vernon and Billy Bob know the truth. Lucas is Billy Bob's illegitimate son, and when Lucas gets arrested for murder, Billy Bob must confront the past and serve as his son's criminal attorney.

Lucas is a 16-year-old country musician accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend. He was discovered unconscious near the girl's dead body and has no clear recollection of what happened. However, Billy Bob knows the way things operate in Deaf Smith, Texas, how scapegoats are made out of the innocent and those without power are exploited. The children of the wealthy East Enders were with Billy Bob's son and the dead girl the evening of her murder. As the trial proceeds, Billy Bob soon realizes that he will have to bring injury upon himself and Lucas in order to save his son. As a result, Billy Bob makes enemies that are much more dangerous than the numerous criminals he faced as a Texas Ranger.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Burke gives the beloved Dave Robicheaux (e.g., Cadillac Jukebox, LJ 8/96) a vacation and shines his talent on the vast, brooding beauty and inbred violence of rural Texas. Texas Ranger-turned-lawyer Billy Bob Holland must defend his illegitimate son, Lucas Smothers, on a murder rap. Billy Bob knows that backwater Deaf Smith, Texas, will eat Lucas for lunchespecially the East Enders, the town's pocket of elite kids. He mounts his defense with sporadic help from sexy cop/possible federal agent Mary Beth Sweeney. Some uniquely Southern weirdos wind up in Lucas's and Billy Bob's orbit, including newly freed and ax-grinding con Garland T. Moon. Along with an evocative sense of place rendered in the Burke tradition, Billy Bob's humanity suffuses every page with a warm, golden glow. Readers will undoubtedly fall for him as he lassos a child abuser in the center of town and argues with the ghost of his slain Ranger partner. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/97.]Susan A. Zappia, Maricopa Cty. Lib. Dist., Phoenix

Alan Ryan

Burke writes popular fiction that is so well crafted, so well written, and so intelligent that it soars above other fiction of its type and into the realm of high art. -- The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Charles Champlin

James Lee Burke is one of the best writers of crime fiction in America. His prose is an uncommon mixture of taut realism and chaotic eloquence. -- Los Angeles Times

Kirkus Reviews

You can take Burke out of Louisiana's Iberia Parish (Cadillac Jukebox, 1996, etc.), but you can't take Iberia out of Burke, as this tangled tale of Texas murder and memory makes wondrously clear.

Without his résumé in front of you, you could never tell lawyer Billy Bob Holland (ex-Texas Ranger, ex-assistant US attorney) from Iberia's Dave Robicheaux. Billy Bob's passion for justice, like Dave's, is constantly battling the other passions that have engendered an unacknowledged son, Lucas Smothers, and that keep sending him into battle armed with more than his legal briefs. When Lucas is arrested for raping and murdering Roseanne Hazlitt, there's no question but that Billy Bob will defend him; the only question is how far he'll go. Ranged against Lucas are dyslexic, psychopathic Darl Vanzandt, the spoiled son of a wealthy East End millionaire; Garland T. Moon, the rabid jailmate whose off-the-record confession to a California murder Lucas overhears from his neighboring cell; and just about every law enforcement official resident in Deaf Smith, Texas, from smarmy jailer Harley Sweet to Mexican drug agent Felix Ringo. Burke saves Lucas's murder trial for the end, but the real action takes place long beforehand, as Billy Bob goes head to head with Ringo, Moon, the Vanzandts, two sheriffs, and his own defense witnesses. Each confrontation, as in the Dave Robicheaux novels, is engorged by the hero's overwhelming memories of his own family's involvement with evil: his father's violent death; his great- grandfather's spectral romance with Jennie, the outlaw Rose of Cimarron; and his own accidental killing of L.Q. Navarro, the Ranger partner who haunts his daily rounds as if he hadn't been dead 11 years. Other riddles about the past keep the pot boiling so furiously it's a wonder Burke can get it to the table.

All the roiling intensity of the Robicheaux stories. Even the ragged ends make other mystery novels look anemic.