Cimarron Rose

Notes

Cimarron Rose by James Lee Burke won him his second Edgar Award.

It is set in Deaf Smith Texas, not New Iberia Louisiana, and features Billy Bob Holland, not Dave Robicheaux. Harsh critics argue that the differences in Burkes’s novels stop there. But if you enjoy a straight-up hero with a tangled backstory and a strict code of honour, who battles sadists and psychopaths in a beautifully drawn setting, there is nothing wrong with that.

Publisher’s Synopsis

Texas attorney Billy Bob Holland must confront the past in order to save his illegitimate son from a murder conviction in this brilliant, fast-paced thriller from beloved New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke.

Lucas Smothers, nineteen and from the wrong end of town, has been arrested for the rape and murder of a local girl. His lawyer, former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland, is convinced of Lucas’s innocence—but proving it means unearthing the truth from the seething mass of deceit and corruption that spreads like wildfire in a gossipy small town where everybody knows everybody else’s business.

Billy Bob’s relationship with Lucas’s family is not an easy one. Years back he was a close friend of Mrs. Smothers—too close, according to her husband. But when Lucas overhears gruesome tales of serial murder from a neighboring cell in the local lock-up, he himself looks like a candidate for an untimely death, and Billy Bob incurs enemies far more dangerous than any he faced as a Ranger.

With the same electric language and hard-edged style that brought James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels to the forefront of American crime fiction, Cimarron Rose explodes with a harsh, evocative setting and unforgettable characters.

Read a full review of Cimarron Rose by James Lee Burke at Kirkus Reviews.