Rain Gods

July 13, 2009
Burke returns with a masterfully told, high-octane thriller in which a young Iraqi war veteran and his girlfriend find themselves on the run after a series of brutal murders in the Deep South. Fortunately, Sheriff Hack Holland is on the case and back in a world he'd tried to leave behind so long ago. While there are familiar aspects to this story, Burke's writing never fails to captivate nor does Will Patton's narration disappoint. As Sheriff Holland, Patton is gritty and intense, but subtly heartbroken and grieving over the death of his wife. As war veteran Pete Flores, Patton creates a relatable character who is at once terrified and exposed while still as heroic as one can possibly be. "A Simon & Schuster hardcover (Reviews, June 1). (July)" .

June 15, 2009
The murder of nine Thai prostitutes in a border town kicks off fireworks for a Texas cousin of Billy Bob Holland, who left plenty of violent miscreants behind when he retired to Montana (In the Moon of Red Ponies, 2004, etc.).

The nine women were hijacked, herded out of a truck to a lot behind a gas station, methodically executed and buried in a mass grave, at least one of them before she was quite dead. Who could have done such a ghastly deed? wonders Sheriff Hackberry Holland. Almost everybody it seems. The massacre certainly wouldn't have been beneath Artie Rooney, who's run prostitutes in Galveston since Hurricane Katrina chased him out of New Orleans, or Hugo Cistranos, the dead-eyed contract killer who followed him. These heavily armed lowlifes seem determined to put the crime off on Nick Dolan, whose family restaurant adjoins his topless bar. Scariest of all is Jack Collins, aka the Preacher, a one-man apocalypse whose most unnerving tactic is to bring his enemies face to face with imminent death and then decline to pull the trigger. Given the high-casualty infighting among the criminals and the Prince of Darkness as antagonist, it's hard for Hackberry, who's haunted by the requisite Burke demons (war, drink, women), to make much of an impression, especially when the most heroic characters are Nick's wife Esther and truck-stop waitress Vikki Gaddis.

Nearly every scene builds to a fine crescendo of tension, though the story as a whole is too ritualistic to do the same.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from June 1, 2009
Burke brings back a character from one of his early novels, Lay Down My Sword and Shield (1971). Hackberry Holland, cousin to Billy Bob Holland, star of his own series, is the sheriff of a sleepy Texas town near the Mexican border, the last stop for the aging Hack after a tumultuous personal life and an up-and-down career as a politician and lawyer. His downshifted lifestyle is torn asunder when Hack discovers the bodies of nine illegal aliens, buried in a shallow grave behind a church. The trail leads to a troubled Iraq vet, who knows something about the killings, and his country-singer girlfriend, both now on the run from various baddies who want to make sure the kids dont tell anyone what they know. Hack and his deputy, Pam Tibbs, who has a romantic interest in her boss despite his insistence that he is much too old for her, join the chase. It will come as no surprise to Burke fans to learn that the chief baddie is a seriously bent, Bible-spouting stone killer who sees Hack as the other side of his coin, but this is no by-the-numbers retread of familiar Burke tropes. Hackberry, more so than his cousin, Billy Bob, is his own man, shaped by the unforgiving Texas soil the way Robicheaux bleeds bayou blue, less of a powder kegwaiting to explode than Dave but, in Burkes signature phrase, still stand-up all the way. Burke fans will notice much that is familiar herethe lyricism, the minor key, the elegiac refrainbut the melody is new and haunting. And, besides, you just have to love a guy with a name like Hackberry.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)