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A DISTURBING FICTIONAL ACCOUNT OF REALITY

I had never read anything by author T. Jefferson Parker, but while browsing the bookshelves in the public library I spotted “Iron River” and read the dust jacket. It’s description painted a scenario that was disturbingly real for me since I live on that very southern border that the book chronicles. A young man is mistakenly killed in a covert arms bust, the young man being the only son of one of the most notorious drug cartel leaders in Mexico. Honor demands retribution, and retribution cartel style involves multiple deaths and horrendous torture. Unfortunately the object of the retribution is a United States ATF agent, and the action takes place on the U.S. side of the border, an international outrage.

Also involved is the illicit manufacture and sale of firearms to those same cartels, accomplished by American citizens whose lust for money overwhelms any sense of right and wrong. These two items are the basis for the action in the book which is driven by the main character, Charlie Hood, a Los Angeles Sheriff deputy, on loan to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, to participate in an operation called “Blowdown”, an attempt to control the trafficking of illegal firearms between San Diego and Arizona.

But the character who raises this story beyond a mere crime novel is Mike Finnigan. Mike is a mysterious victim of hit and run, ending up in the local Buenavista hospital and requesting the presence of our protagonist, Charlie Hood, being recommended to Mike by an associate as a man to help Mike track down his daughter. But there is more to Mike that is at first apparent, for it seems that he is privy to information about people, places and events that he has no possibility of knowing. When this knowledge infringes on the ATF’s operations, and when the lives of others are lost because of Mike’s knowledge, Charlie takes a personal interest in a man who can only be a mole for the drug cartels or something much more ominous,a man beyond time and space.

For the most part “Iron River” kept me engaged, if not entertained, but I just couldn’t get overly enthused with the author’s writing style. While most of the dialog and action is in the second person, a secondary character’s role is told in the first person, something you would expect of the main character. This curious style made me wonder who this book was really about. The cover plainly states: A Charlie Hood novel, but Charlie’s part is relayed in secondary fashion.

Also confusing, and also disappointing, was the conclusion of the story, for it had NO conclusion! Without giving it away, everything you would expect of a story such as this fails to materialize. And it is more than just a post modern ending, it is more like an interlude to a “Part Two” without proclaiming it to be so.Suffice it to say that I WASN’T impressed, and probably won’t be reading any more books by this author.

I RATE “IRON RIVER”

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A Welcome Break From Reality

In The Frozen Rabbi, a miraculously preserved 18th century rabbi reanimates in the basement of the 21st century family whose ancestors acted as his protectors for several hundred years. When I first read a review of this book in my local paper’s “Books” section I just KNEW that I had to have it. I am always on the prowl for a rousing fantasy/alternate reality/satire type of read so I immediately ran out to the local library and put in a request for Steve Stern’s latest novel and, Lo and Behold, there it was! Now, after a few weeks have past since I finished it, and well before it’s return date, I must say that it lived up to my anticipation.

“The Frozen Rabbi” is not just a fantabulist’s tale involving Jewish mysticism and social satire, it contains two separate narratives that bind the book together. Part of one track, a touching love story, concerns two Polish immigrants, Schmerle, who has a natural genius for things mechanical, and Jocheved, a woman with a natural touch for business who hides her damaged femininity in the guise of a young man’s clothing. These two end up partnering in business together, Schmerle unaware of his partner’s true gender, till Schmerel’s forbidden (he thinks) yearnings bring out the fulfillment of their true partnership. The rest of the narrative involves their descendants as they care for the object of the book’s title.

The second track, which chapters are interspersed with the first track, chronicles the exploits of one Bernie Karp, a 15 year old overweight underachiever whose chief activity is sexual self gratification, after he discovers the frozen Rabbi Eliezer, a family heirloom so to speak, who has been past down through the family for over 100 years. When Bernie discovers that the Rabbi has defrosted during a power outage he is shocked to find that he has reanimated before his eyes. They soon form a partnership of sorts, Bernie teaching the rabbi English while the rebbe teaches Bernie the spirituality of his Jewish heritage. As Bernie becomes more adept in the practice of his faith the rabbi becomes more of a religious charlatan, selling the most marketable aspects of Kabalistic practice to a new generation of moderns who are hungry for some new easy-believism.

For me these two stories are what makes “The Frozen Rabbi” worth reading. But for those who are of a more practical mind this book may be a bit disconcerting, for rather than presenting characters with whom they can identify, Stern uses his characters to puncture our preconceived ideas of who we are as a society, while lampooning much of what our American culture considers to be “spiritual”. A rollicking good read!

Author Stern was born in 1947 and currently lives in Balston Spa, New York, and teaches at Skidmore College. Despite the heavy Jewish mystical themes in his books Stern say that he had no such influence while growing up in the American south. He says:

“I grew up in the South in a Reform synagogue. My joke is that I thought I was a Methodist until I was 35. It was so completely stripped of the accouterments of the Jewish tradition.”
“I came to the Jewish tradition through books. I’d been writing stories, most of which remained unpublished. They had these Jewish elements — characters with Jewish names. That came as a surprise to me. I did not think of myself as particularly Jewish. I had few Jewish friends. My whole frame of reference was the South. I still like to be thought of as a Southern writer though it doesn’t happen very often.”

For a revealing a lengthly look at the author check out this interview with Steve Stern

FOR PURE ENTERTAINMENT I RATE “THE FROZEN RABBI” WITH

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I Discovered Burke By Chance, But Now I Am Hooked

The reasons that people read books are as varied as the books themselves. Some read out of boredom, some as an escape. Still others look for excitement while their neighbors may read for enlightenment. Me, I read for the escape from the everyday struggle that plunging into someone else’s life may bring. Also, at times I read for comfort. Nothing takes my mind off things and delivers me to a place of contentment as it does when I am engrossed in a good book. My book reading pattern usually revolves around three genres, old time westerns, science fiction, and modern crime/mysteries. Very seldom do I venture from this battle plan and when I do it is usually at someone else’s suggestion, or because of a review I may have encountered in the local fish wrap.

Not long ago while in a grocery store checkout line, the checker, with whom I have become a familiar face, asked me if I was interested in some books that she had in the trunk of her car, books that her husband was trying to get rid of. She figured that because I always had a book in my hand whenever I stopped in at lunch time that maybe I’d be interested in her hubby’s books, so I politely told her that I’d look at them. After picking out three of them I thanked her, tossed them in the cab of my truck and got back to work. Later I looked at them again and tried to remember why it was that I chose them, but only one of them stood out, “In The Moon Of Red Ponies” by author James Lee Burke, and that was because I thought that it was a Western novel, sort of like Loren Estleman, Louis Lamoure or Zane Grey. WRONG!

The supposed western novel turned out to be a modern western crime novel, much to my disappointment, at least for the first 20 pages or so, but 100 pages later I found myself engrossed in the story and captivated by the talent of an author whom I couldn’t remember even hearing about.

AuthorJames Lee Burke (pictured above right), whose very demeanor projects old time western sensibilities, is a writer of great, evocative and descriptive talent combined with an ability to keep the reader captivated with his sometimes complex story lines. I was so taken by this book that I hit the local used book store as WELL as the library in order to find the previous three books in his “Billy Bob Holland” series, “Cimarron Rose”, “Heart Wood”, and “Bitterroot”, which are set in the hill country of Texas and in the low hills of Montana, and now that I have finished them I plan on picking up the first book in his “Dave Robicheaux” series, set in the authors home state of Louisiana.

Here’s a quote from Thrilling Detective that describes the main character, Billy Bob, in these four books:

Writer James Lee Burke, best known for Cajun almost-PI Dave Robicheaux has another crack with Deaf Smith, Texas attorney BILLY BOB HOLLAND. Like his more famous creation, Billy Bob is a troubled gent, haunted by the violence of his ancestors, which he fears may be his true legacy, and his own more immediate troubled past. In fact, the ghost of L.Q. Navarro, the best friend he accidentally killed, continues to pop up and discuss the days events and Billy Bob’s ongoing guilt.

“I had been a street cop, a Texas Ranger, a federal prosecutor, and now I was a small town defense lawyer who didn’t defend drug traffickers, as if that restriction gave a nobility to my practice that other attorneys didn’t possess.”

Aiding and abetting the brooding Billy Bob in his cases is his pal, neighbor and private investigator Temple Carol, who admits to have a spot in her heart for her employer. Like the Robicheaux series, the lyrical descriptive touch of Burke brings the setting, in this case west Texas, to life.

And Burke has brought that same unflinching and unapologetically poetic eye to Missoula, Montana, where he relocates in the third novel, Bitterroot, which saw him moving to west Montana and hung out a shingle for his law practice.

Billy Bob is a complex fellow who, although aware of his ancestors’ violent nature, has come to a not so balanced view of what that violence can do in his own life, often letting the berserker in him wreak vengeance when reason and control no longer make sense. Accompanying Billy Bob in his quieter moments is the ghost of his former partner and friend L.Q.Navarro, who he accidentally killed while on an illegal foray into Mexico to assassinate drug runners. Here’s a description from Billy Bob’s own mouth, selected from two of the books in the series:

From “Bitterroot” (1999)

Years ago, on a nocturnal and unautho­rized raid into Coahuila, Mexico I accidentally shot and killed the best friend I ever had.

Today the spirit of my dead friend accom­panied me wherever I went.  L.Q. Navarro was lean and mustached, with grained skin and lustrous black eyes, and he wore the clothes he had died in, a pinstripe suit and vest with a glowing white shirt, an ash-gray Stetson sweat-stained around the crown, and dusty boots and rowled Mexican spurs that tinkled like tiny bells when he walked.

I saw him at evening, inside mesquite groves traced with fireflies, sitting on top of a stall in a shaft of sunlight on Sunday morning while I bridled my Morgan to go to Mass, or sometimes idly looking over my shoulder while I fished the milky-green river at the back of my property. Whenever the opportu­nity presented itself, he assured me the purple wound high up on his chest was not my fault. That was L.Q. His courage, his stoic ac­ceptance of his fate, his refusal to accuse be­came the rough-hewn cross and set of nails that waited for me every night in my sleep.

From  “Heartwood” (2001)

L.Q. and I raided deep into Coahuila and killed drug transporters and set their huts ablaze and watched their tar, reefer, and coke flame like white gas against the sky. In that moment all the moral complexities disappeared.

There was no paperwork to be done, no rage over our inability to reconcile feelings with legality. Sometimes we would find the deed several nights later, still unburied and exposed in the moonlight, their skin glowing like tallow that has melted and cooled again. I had no more feeling about them than I would have about bags of fertilizer.

The trade-off came later, when I fired blindly up an arroyo and watched sparks fly into the darkness and L.Q. Navarro fling his hands at the sky and tumble toward me.

Brave people kept the fire in their belly out of their heads. Reckless and self-indulgent ones let someone else pay their dues.

James Lee Burke and Billy Bob Holland will now be on my watch list for future releases, and here’s hoping that there will be quite a few more to come. But given the author’s age, 73, this is a fragile hope. For more information on James Lee Burke read this interview taken from Powell’s Books back in October of ’06. And for a more complete look at the author read this article written in the Baton Rouge, La. “Advocate” this past April. Hopefully this will whet your appetite for more.

I RATE JAMES LEE BURKE, THE AUTHOR, WITH

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