Customer Reviews

Rain Gods

5 star:		(62)
4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

And, for the most part, succeeds. If Burke doesn't twist and torture and then so beautifully reassemble passages in McCarthy's unique version of the English language, he is certainly no rookie when it comes to spinning his own brand of moody, atmospheric prose never too far a field from Faulkner's steamy bayous and weighty themes - but decidedly more readable. In the spellbinding "Rain Gods", Burke moves west from Louisiana's delta and Dave Robicheaux's perpetual but lovable gloom to a Texas southern border town where Korean War veteran Hackberry Holland is sheriff. "Hack" stumbles upon the shallow churchyard grave of nine illegal alien women, setting off a deliciously convoluted mystery/thriller featuring a rich field - rich even by Burke's lofty standards - of characters ranging from the mildly flawed to the unrepentantly deranged. Like Robicheaux, Sheriff Holland is haunted by ghosts from his past - hefting a trunk full of baggage that carries the nightmares of North Korean POW camps, the guilt from days of alcoholism and debauchery, and sorrow over the loss of his second wife. Holland pursues his own brand of justice battling these internal demons as well as a host of those in real flesh and blood - from the serial-killing psycho "Preacher" to three-letter government agencies not afraid to sacrifice the mostly innocent to bag the bigger game.

Like McCarthy's "No Country For Old Men", "Rain Gods" deals with the drug trade across the border, and like "No Country", it is brutal, violent, and realistic. Burke, always the champion of the poor working class and never afraid to proselytize, lays it on thick here, though without Bush in the White House to cast as the villain, the targets of his righteous but sincere venom is a bit confused. Where McCarthy wraps "No Country" around simple, apolitical despair, Burke shades "Rain Gods" with a heavy hand of morality. But it works. Hackberry is a complex but likable protagonist - the stoic and troubled loner cast perfectly for the Clint Eastwood of "Gran Torino" - with a Texas accent. Hack's deputy Pam Tibbs adds color and sexual tension, and Iraq War vet Pete Flores and his talented girlfriend Vikki Gaddis make credible fugitives. But most fascinating is the almost mystical "preacher", a complex and unpredictable villain, already an urban legend among those who pursue him on both sides of the border.

In the final analysis, despite some minor flaws, this is a powerful novel - entertaining while sobering, beautifully written, the uncommon and intelligent page-turner one would expect from James Lee Burke, who is without any doubt is back in full "Jolie Blon's Bounce" or "Last Car to Elysian Fields"-form. Hackberry Holland will no doubt fill pages of subsequent Burke novels, which I'll be anxiously awaiting. Well done, Mr. Burke, and good to have you back.

There is much to admire and lots to like in the writing of James Lee Burke. At its best, his prose can be poetic and evocative. When he doesn't descend to favorite tropes (for example, "pardners" and "swinging dicks") or let himself slip over the perilous edge of metaphor ("[he] ate a pattern of buckshot as wide as his hand and watched his brains splatter across the side panel of his truck"), he uses the language well and is a pleasure to read.

If I have a criticism, and I do, it's that he leaves his stories ragged. Too many characters are allowed to bow in, often for no seeming purpose, and subplots head off in their own directions like pets that have escaped their leashes. It sometimes seems that Mr. Burke just can't tame the writing beast that lives within him.

Rain Gods is a case in point. There are three or four sets of bad guys when one or two would suffice. There are several layers of cops, at odds with one another. Another bunch of characters is groomed for unlikely heroism. Sadly, I really don't feel that I came to know and understand these people through the long course of the book.

The novel suffers in comparison to Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, a comparison that is inescapable. Both novels are centered on an old-time Texas sheriff with a past he is trying in some way to live down. An innocent and his woman are fleeing pursuit by a single-minded avenger. Border traffickers litter the landscape with bodies. The bete noir of Rain Gods, a villain called Preacher Jack Collins, is one part McCarthy's Chugre and two parts Judge Holden from Blood Meridian. The story of both novels is one of moral entropy.

But where Burke is expansive, McCarthy is spare. Where Burke ranges free, McCarthy is disciplined in both his scope and his language: if this isn't a mess, it'll do until one comes along. Why spin off a paragraph when ten words will suffice?

This is not to say that Rain Gods is not worth reading. It is. But I wish it hadn't come in No Country's shadow, and I wish it had been pared down and more directed so that I had a better sense of just what its author was trying to say.

I always look forward to a new book in James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux series each July. So I was a bit disappointed to discover that Rain Gods is not part of this series. But it didn't take me long to enjoy it--every bit as much as Robicheaux. In fact, I think it was a good change for him. Although it takes place in Texas, it's not part of his Billy Bob Holland series, either (although Holland plays a very small role in this book).

The time is post-Katrina, and a number of displaced New Orleans crime figures find themselves relocated to Texas. These guys are into everything from drug smuggling and prostitution to murder for hire. Sheriff Hackberry Holland gets an anonymous phone call about nine Asian women buried in a mass grave. Hack has had a checkered history, battling the demons caused by his time in a Korean POW camp. After spending time as a lawyer, he finds himself as county sheriff later in life. That's not necessarily a bad thing. He is told that "you're stubborn as a cinder block." In Rain Gods, Hack tries to juggle a lot of balls. While Hack is trying to solve the crime, the FBI and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) have their own agenda while a hit-man named Jack "Preacher" Collins is trying to kill anyone associated with the Asian mass-murder.

Preacher is perhaps one of the most fearsome villains in fiction. Thinking himself the right hand of God, his code of ethics is chilling. Yet, he often does the right (and unpredictable) thing. It is intriguing to see him match wits with a number of characters, including Hack. As Hack says, "If certain things we do or witness don't leave a stone bruise on the soul, there's something wrong with our humanity."

For my money, James Lee Burke is perhaps the most eloquent, articulate, poignant and powerful mystery writer being published today. Isaac Clawson, and ICE agent, lost his young daughter to a brutal crime. "Theologians claimed that anger was a cancer and that hatred was one of the seven deadly sins. They were wrong, Clawson thought. Anger was an elixir that cauterized sorrow and passivity and victimhood from the metabolism; it lit fires in the belly..."

I came to admire Sheriff Holland and will definitely go back and read one of Burke's earlier works. I understand that Lay Down My Sword and Shield features Hack as a young lawyer. It will be interesting to see where both men (Holland and James Lee Burke) came from and how far they have traveled.

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.)

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.

"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.

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 least improper with a woman of her age and station.

The themes that Burke visits here are familiar, well-trodden ones. Chief among them is an individual's capacity for good or for evil, sometimes revealed within the occurrence of a single action. The power of women over men is another; it is women who spark the catalysts that take place in RAIN GODS and who ultimately, if indirectly, bring an end to them, though it is men who provide the instrumentality. Burke, notwithstanding the familiarity of these storylines, continues to find variations from which to work new and wondrous tales. Holland is an extremely realistic senior sheriff, a man who in some ways is too old to do his job and yet still does it because he must. On those rare occasions when he uses his service firearm, Holland for the most part misses his target, succeeding only and possibly with enigmatic results at best. He is the toughest of tough guys in the sense that he can take a beating, as he demonstrates, though the days when he could administer one appear to be long gone.

It is the narrative, however, that is the biggest strength of this character-driven novel. Burke is at heart a poet capable of describing the light and the dark in equal measures of the beautiful and horrific, one who can both gradually illuminate the darkness and cast dark shadows across the sun, often within the space of a single short paragraph. RAIN GODS is a work of deep, violent and, yes, beautiful magic, a wondrous manifestation of one of our best American authors becoming even better, as improbable and impossible as that may seem.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Hackberry Holland is no Dave Robicheaux.

The lyricism of Burke's writing is lovely and his descriptions of people and places so true you feel you've stepped into his world.

But this plot, involving an Iraqui war veteran and his girlfriend, and the subplot of Hackberry's angst and his deputy's lust for him, became so tedious, I felt like I was trapped instead of just visiting.

The story is lackluster, the characters dispirited and the backdrop is a dreary counterpoint to the excitement of Robicheaux's Iberia Parish. Holland is so weary he mopes through to the end.

So did I.

All that I can say to reccommend Rain Gods is that the audio version is read by Will Patton. He could read a cookbook and it would be enthralling. Unfortunately, Burke doesn't give him the ingredients to make this a satisfying meal.

'Rain Gods' is James Lee Burke's latest work of fiction. While it gives a different setting from his Dave Robicheaux novels set in southwestern Louisiana, it explores similar themes those books have repeatedly addressed. A flawed but ultimately good protagonist, Sheriff Hackberry Holland, must wrestle simultaneously with his heroic and dissolute past while pursuing bad men who have no restraints against committing whatever enormity their ends require. The admixture of plots in the story line offer an ironic paradox: obsessed men on opposite sides of the law proceed under a black flag, following no rules but their own: Jack "Preacher" Collins, a person who had been unwanted as a child and who is a inexorable professional killer who harbors a death wish, and Isaac Clawson, an agent for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement who daughter was murdered by criminals and, as a result, is on a single-minded mission to eliminate as many miscreants as possible. This story is set in the stark landscape of southwestern Texas. Perhaps the stark and pitiless landscape of the setting of Rain Gods sets in higher relief possible moral issues. This is not a country with limited nuance: it permits no easy moral relativistic excuses: right is clearly right, wrong is unequivocally wrong. It is where fundamentalism and distrust of the government often springs; and, in the words of the protagonist, with some reason.

The novel begins with a mass murder of illegal immigrants. A bystander to the affair (Pete Flores) and his girlfriend (Vicki Gaddis) are relentlessly pursued by the killers themselves, assorted sleazy crime figures from San Antonio, New Orleans, and the west coast, the FBI, Clawson, an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent with his own demons, Nick Dolan, a failed restauranteur and escort service owner but family man, and, not by any means least, a small town Texas sheriff. It has a lot of similarities to Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, but is more meandering and more complex in story line. The sheriff must deal with the reality of truly loathsome men, flawed and sometimes self-serving good men, his own problematic past, and the conflict between his sense of duty and rigid morality with his attraction to his Deputy, Pam Tibbs. There is a healthy ambiguity in the novel: immoral characters with a surprising self-defined morality that restrains them acting on simple expediency ; basically moral ones who are capable of true deceit and manipulation if higher reasons of law enforcement justify it. Also, there is the optimistic message that some people may change and grow through adversity.

Burke's novel Rain Gods proceeded at a healthy, readable pace; but toward the end began to be confused, incredible, and not completely convincing. Still, I reckon it to be an above-average crime adventure novel and recommend it to the reader. I do offer a caveat that it contains some fairly violent passages.

Four stars: good enough to re-read

As ever, wonderful descriptive passages abound. However this is really just the same story as he has been writing for many years now. All the usual characters,scenes and themes are present. Personally I am yearning for Mr Burke to write something fresh. I love his writing but am tiring of the Deja vous. It has long past the point that to read one of his books is to read them all. I realise this is true of many crime authors but when one has such talents as Mr Burke possesses we should expect much much more.