Cimarron Rose (Billy Bob Boy Howdy)

Cimarron Rose (Billy Bob Boy Howdy)
by James Lee Burke

Cimarron Rose (Billy Bob Boy Howdy)
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Book Summary Information

Author: James Lee Burke
Edition: Audio Cassette
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Published: 1997-08-01
ISBN: 0671576305
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Book Reviews of Cimarron Rose (Billy Bob Boy Howdy)

Book Review: About as good a contemporary legal thriller as you'll get
Summary: 4 Stars

Burke has created an imperfect protagonist with Billy Bob Holland, and although the book has some complex plots and subplots that may seem a bit conventionalized, the strength of the descriptive writing is such and the broad swath of characters he creates makes up for it. But more significantly is that James Lee Burke has in his more recent books created reverberations between the local and the culture at large. Virtually every law enforcement organization from the feds to the Mexican federales are shown to be not the law abiding and enforcing institutions they claim to be, and it's about as accessible a metaphor to the degradation of the cultural ideas of fairness, goodness, concern for the underdog and the perversion of personal independence that seems to have befallen a good number of Americans. You can read it for the language, the characters, the attention to emotional and physical detail, but when all is said and done, you have a portrait of America that is not very pretty and not painted by a so called 'liberal' but by a protagonist who, as Hemingway said every good writer should have, "A built-in Sh-T detector."

Summary of Cimarron Rose (Billy Bob Boy Howdy)

Texas attorney and former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland has many secrets. Among them is Vernon Smother's son, Lucas, a now-teenaged boy about whom few know the truth -- Lucas is really Billy Bob's illegitimate son. When Lucas is arrested for murder, Billy Bob must confront the past and serve as the boy's criminal attorney.

Billy Bob knows the propensity of the town, Deaf Smith, Texas, to make scapegoats out of the innocent and to exploit and sexually use the powerless. During Lucas's trial, Billy Bob realizes that he will have to bring injury upon Lucas as well as himself in order to save his son. As a result, Billy Bob incurs enemies that are far more dangerous than any he faced as a Texas 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 new, evocative setting that will establish Billy Bob Holland as James Lee Burke's next great character.


Billy Bob Holland, the protagonist of Cimarron Rose, is an attorney in the dusty Texas town of Deaf Smith. An ex-Texas Ranger (cop, not ball-player) who mistakenly killed his partner during a drug bust, Holland is jolted from his brooding when his estranged illegitimate son is accused of the rape and murder of a party girl. He takes the case, of course, and things get complicated mighty quick. On a hunch only a father could believe, Holland is sure his son is being railroaded. Doggedly pursuing the truth, he runs afoul of sadistic cops, a powerful family, and the euphoniously-named Garland T. Moon, a feral thug with something to hide. Luckily, the folks on his team are just as tough. Burke's book isn't gritty realism--Holland's dead partner visits him often--but the characters ring true in a weird way. They are quirky and appealing, and even the criminals make good company while the whodunit unfolds.

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