Long-time fans of James Lee Burke’s mostly wonderful Dave Robicheaux novels will be eager to see what the author has in store for his newest creation, criminal attorney and former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland, in Cimarron Rose (Hyperion, $24.95). More importantly, they will want to know if Burke has returned to form after stretching credulity by making his growing family of characters undergo almost superhuman tests of strength and character.
In “Cimarron Rose,” Holland is haunted by many of the same kinds of demons that chase Robicheaux, including the ghost of a former lawman pal he accidentally killed on a search-and-destroy mission, and the written legacy of his frontier preacher great-grandfather. Burke demands that Holland atone for past indiscretions of his own by having the lawyer defend his secretly illegitimate son against charges of murder, after the dimwitted boy’s girlfriend is found murdered and possibly raped.
The setting is Deaf Smith, Texas, a smoldering ember of a town that seems to exist in the middle of nowhere, where wealthy brats force their less-privileged companions to pay the price for their boredom. The trial opens a can of worms that not only threatens to upset the status quo but also to reveal painful truths about several generations of Holland men.
Typically, Burke puts several large hurdles in front of his protagonist, challenging him to make peace with himself before any real crime-solving can take place. These include his son’s brutal hayseed stepfather, a shadowy federal investigation of the boy’s accusers, a couple of musclebound fiends and a doomed romance with a beautiful cop.
The narrative stumbles occasionally, especially as Holland persists in banging his head into walls, but Burke is too good a writer to let things get bogged down for long. As the truth is unraveled, readers again are treated to the kind of deeply atmospheric prose and fever-pitch drama few authors can touch.
A Spider for Loco Shoat, by Douglas C. Jones (Henry Holt, $25).
Anyone who has read any of Jones’ many fine historical novels knows it’s impossible to complete a chapter without getting an education about life in the Old West. Filled with telling details and colorfully believable characters, Jones’ books are as informative as they are entertaining.
In “A Spider for Loco Shoat,” Oscar Schiller, a former deputy federal marshall, takes it upon himself to investigate the slaying of an important businessman in Ft. Smith, Ark. The only witness is a 7-year-old orphan who, while eating lemon pie and listening to frogs in the National Cemetery, comes across the victim. It is 1907, a time when Ft. Smith nearly has completed the transition from being rough-and-ready to civilized, and, next-door, Oklahoma is preparing for statehood. Schiller’s investigation takes him from the red-light district of the city into the Indian territories and back to the offices of lawmen he once trained and trusted.
Jones introduces us to unique individuals we genuinely care about and keeps us guessing throughout his continually inventive narrative. It isn’t until we meet the arachnid in the title–well into the novel–that we finally are able to unravel the mystery, and, by that time, we don’t want the book to end.
Sacred, by Dennis Lahane (Morrow, $23).
It hasn’t taken long–only two critically acclaimed novels–for Lahane to be accepted into the pantheon of must-read authors. He won a Shamus Award for his first book, “A Drink Before the War,” and expertly avoided the sophomore slump with “Darkness, Take My Hand.”
In “Sacred,” he gives private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro another intriguing assignment, as they are practically coerced into finding the missing daughter of a Boston billionaire. If her trail is still warm, it’s only because they are following in the footsteps of their old mentor, Jay Becker, an ace P.I. who also is missing. In their investigation, the detectives stumble upon a secretive, grief-therapy organization that fronts for a computer-savvy cult. The woman, Desiree Stone, might be dead–or she might have absconded with a large sum of the cult’s money and be hiding in Florida. In fact, the truth is much more sinister than either of these possibilities.
Lahane grabs the reader at the get-go and pulls us through his no-nonsense narrative at breakneck speed. More than anything else, we are entranced by the inner workings of the marvelously conceived Kenzie and Gennaro as they confront evil at almost every turn in their investigation and reveal more of themselves in every chapter.
The Riverview Murders, by Michael Raleigh (St. Martin’s, $21.95).
When Chicago P.I. Paul Whelan is hired by an elderly woman to find her long-lost brother, he doesn’t realize his mission will include solving a murder that took place nearly a half-century before on the midway of Riverview amusement park. Working only off an old photograph and the scattered memories of his client, Whelan is able to recreate a time when a handful of young friends found themselves trapped in a situation bigger than they could handle. Somehow, he is able to find most of the old gang and uncover a conspiracy of more recent vintage. For Chicagoans, the fun comes in revisiting Riverview and following Whelan around Uptown and along Belmont Avenue in pursuit of clues. Raleigh is a nimble writer, and this fifth novel in his series makes for a brisk and enjoyable diversion from the dog days of summer.
Rhode Island Red, by Charlotte Carter (Mask Noir, $15.99).
Nanette is a 28-year-old Manhattan street musician–saxophone, no less–with a master’s degree in French and an abundance of attitude. But even Nanette is thrown for a loop when a fellow player she takes home one night turns up dead the next morning, and he’s an undercover cop to boot. But he’s not the only one who’s wheeled out of this fine, funky first novel on a slab. In this sliver of a book, Carter manages to tell a tale that includes the ghosts of Charlie Parker and Rimbaud, as well as capture a New York City that resonates with jazzy intensity. The crime-solving isn’t bad either.
In brief: We’ve written several times about Miami journalist Edna Buchanan and her terrific Britt Montero series, in which there’s a new entry, “Margin of Error” (Hyperion, $22.95). It should be noted that after Gianni Versace was slain in Miami Beach last month, ABC-TV’s Ted Koppel turned to the Pulitzer Prize winner for insight into violent crime and how it mutates in the south Florida sun. No one knows the scene better.
Fans of Faye Kellerman’s also should be on the alert for her latest Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus novel, “Serpent’s Tooth” (Morrow, $24), which follows the investigation into a murderous attack in a posh Los Angeles restaurant.
