Rain Gods

"Rain Gods" begins with the horrific result of a confrontation between organized crime and small-time crooks, creating big trouble in a little town in Southwest Texas. It is up to aging local Sheriff Hackberry Holland and Deputy Pam Tibbs to protect witnesses and bring the bad guys to justice. Although Burke is one of my favorite authors, I hadn't read anything outside the Dave Robicheaux series until this book. If you are already a Burke fan, you will love this one. If you've never read a Burke novel, do yourself a favor and get started. James Lee Burke has a pure talent for describing places, feelings, scents, and even the weight of the air which pulls the reader inside the story. He writes of flawed heroes, strong women, and of villains who are convinced they are doing right when they couldn't be more wrong. "Rain Gods" is a great read, and you will remember the characters long after you finish turning the pages.

This book easily crosses the line from "popular fiction" into true literature. The way Burke can paint beautiful pictures with words, capture the essence of a setting, the characters' emotions... it's simply amazing. Small town America is Burke's canvas, human strengths and weaknesses his palette, and again he's brought us a completely enthralling story peopled with complex and fully realized characters whose lives collide as they pursue their own individual agendas. Hack Holland is the small town Texas sheriff whose indelible experience as an American POW of the Koreans almost sixty years ago still informs every facet of his life. Preacher Jack Collins is the sociopathic killer driven by his own dark obsessions and twisted motives. Nick Dolan is the small time hustler made good, striving for a life of normalcy and trying to get away from the life that helped him rise from poverty to live a piece of the American dream with a wife and small kids. Vikki Gaddis is the young woman who can sing like an angel, but can't find the inner strength to pursue her dream. Her boyfriend Pete Flores is the young war vet, home after being seriously wounded and recovering, who stumbles into the middle of a criminal enterprise and unwittingly triggers all the events that follow. These people, and many more, are the fascinating and engaging actors in a story of redemption and innocence played out against the sweeping vistas of the Texas border country. Burke has become the American Dostoyevsky, but with even greater skill at ensnaring the reader into the lives of his protagonists and antagonists, and with none of the ponderousness of the Russian original. This book is exciting, captivating, thoroughly entertaining, and beautifully written. I wish I could give it more than five stars.

It is a regrettable likelihood that at this stage in his career, James Lee Burke has fewer books left to write than he has already written. A lesser author in Burke's station might be phoning in his next novel, retreading old situations in new or gently used clothes for a loyal and understanding gallery. That is not true, however, of RAIN GODS, his latest offering. There is no weary or threadbare prose here; the plain and simple truth is that readers will find some of the best and most memorable prose of Burke's career, as has been the case with each of his new books for as long as I can remember. This would be an astounding accomplishment for any author; it is more so for Burke, when one considers the length and breadth of his bibliography, stretching back to well over a third of a century. The primary surprise in RAIN GODS is the return of Hackberry Holland, last featured in LAY DOWN MY SWORD AND SHIELD, a stand-alone work of Burke's that predated the publication of the first Dave Robicheaux novel by some 16 years. Holland was an attorney in 1971; in RAIN GODS, he is a 70-something sheriff whose jurisdiction includes a lonely Texas crossroads that, as it turns out, is the situs of a horrific massacre of innocents. An upright Holland (though it physically pains him to be so) is experiencing a successful recovery from alcoholism, yet he is haunted by misdeeds, both committed by and directed toward him. The discovery of the burial site of nine women, some of them barely out of childhood, reopens old wounds for Holland and creates new ones, both literally and figuratively. Holland initiates an investigation that catches him between a Federal agent on a personal mission of vengeance; ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), which is after a notorious Russian mobster; and an enigmatic hit man. The latter is a homicidal force of nature known as Preacher. It is Preacher, ultimately, who makes RAIN GODS one of Burke's most memorable works. A thoroughly unsympathetic character, Preacher is nonetheless riveting due to his unpredictable nature, which is capable of inspiring him to mete out savage death or touching charity, and is ruled by a frightening capriciousness. One of the book's marvels is Burke's ability to give voice to Preacher's thought processes, infusing his conclusions and actions with a terrifying illogic that gives a new definition to randomness. Several others are caught in the crosshairs with Holland --- some by choice, some intentionally, some with innocence, and some with guilt. Among these are a scarred Iraqi war veteran and his girlfriend, a waitress possessed with a gift of song and cursed with a loyalty to her man, which may well get her killed; a restaurant owner who also secretly owns a string of strip palaces and whose chance remark sparks a violent, senseless act and a string of subsequent deaths; and Holland's female deputy, who is decades younger than him and seeks to awake passions in him that he feels are dead, or at le

Burke wins again with this elegantly written tale of Texas Sheriff Hackberry Holland and his search for the killer of nine Chinese women and girls in a sparsely populated Southwest Texas County. We first met Hackberry as a young lawyer in an early Burke work, LAY DOWN MY SWORD AND SHIELD. Hack, a Korean War veteran, and his able Chief Deputy, Pam Tibbs, must fend off agents from a couple of three-letter federal agencies as they seek a solution to the slaughter while attempting to protect a young, alcholic Irag veteran who witnessed the machine-gunning of the victims. Chock full of displaced New Orleans mob bosses, a hired serial killer, a lonely and talented songstress, and a hapless bar owner bent on protecting his family at all costs, Burke delivers a rip-roaring tale for those who only "surface" read, or those who delve the deeper issues and significances to be found in all his novels. One often overlooked facet of Burke's work is his creation of strong, brave and talented women. RAIN GODS introduces us to three such women in this work - three women of very different lifestyles and talents - who demonstrate that courage, beauty and love is proven in diverse ways. A beautifully written work constructed with Burke's usual haunting, involved narrative. Five stars! (Mea culpa: Added 16 July 2009: To those who may have read my review earlier in the week, I apologize. I confused myself. You will note in the book that Hack spent time in a Korean POW camp. References are made to the Chinese jailers there. In my original review I mis-identified the victims of the mass murder as Chinese. The women were from Thailand. It comes with age. Penny.)