RAIN GODS
James Lee Burke
Simon & Schuster
Thriller
ISBN: 9781439128244
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
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