Bitterroot

[Amazon Link]
(paid link)

This is the 2001 entry in James Lee Burke's series about Texas attorney Billy Bob Holland. Yes, I have some catching up to do.

Billy Bob has gone up to Montana to visit his friend, Doc Voss, who lives amidst the spectacular scenery with his 16-year-old daughter Maisey. You'd think he'd be able to catch a break up there, but Billy Bob attracts trouble, and troubled people. There's a bunch of bikers, a neo-Nazi militia leader, an alcoholic mystery writer with a coke-fiend actress wife, a mafia bigwig, a mysterious female doctor whose ex-husband and son were murdered, another mysterious Native American woman, some ATF guys, a loquacious-but-cantakerous sheriff and … did I miss anyone? Oh yeah, there's the psycho rodeo cowboy who blames Billy Bob for the death of his sister. And more.

Most people in James Lee Burke's books are haunted, Billy Bob more so than most: the ghost of L. Q. Navarro, who Billy Bob accidentally killed years back, occasionally pops up to discuss ongoing events.

Probably more than anyone else I read, Burke is given to colorful vividness:

That night dry lightning rippled through the thunderclouds that sealed the Blackfoot Valley. The wind was up and the trees shook along the riverbank and I coulds see pine needles scattering on the surface of the water. I walked through Doc's fields, restless and irritable and discontent, a nameless fear trembling like a crystal goblet in my breast. The Appaloosa and thoroughbred in Doc's pasture nickered in the darkness and I could smell river dam and pine gum and wildflowers and wet stone and woodsmoke in the air, as though the four seasons of the year had come together at once and formed a dead zone under clouds that pulsed with light but gave no rain. I wished for earsplitting thunder to roll through the mountains or high winds to tear at barn roofs. I wished for the hand of God to destroy the airless vacuum in which I seemed to be caught.

You are there.

Burke also peppers his books with dialogue that nobody in my experience actually speaks, but one kind of wishes they did. Here's the sheriff, put out at Billy Bob:

"I think your mama put you outdoors before the glue was dry, son. I really do," he replied.

Good stuff.


Last Modified 2024-02-01 5:12 AM EDT