Product Description

"James Lee Burke tells a story in a style all his own, in language that's alive, electric. He's a master at setting mood, laying in atmosphere, all with quirky dialogue that's a delight." -- Elmore Leonard

In James Lee Burke's last novel featuring Billy Bob Holland, Bitterroot, the former Texas Ranger left his home state to help a friend threatened by the most dangerous sociopath Billy Bob had ever faced. After vanquishing a truly iniquitous collection of violent individuals, Billy moved his family to west Montana and hung out a shingle for his law practice. But in In the Moon of Red Ponies, he discovers that jail cells have revolving doors and that the government he had sworn to serve may have become his enemy.

His first client in Missoula is Johnny American Horse, a young activist for land preservation and the rights of Native Americans. Johnny is charged with the murder of two mysterious men -- who seem to have recently tried to kill Johnny themselves, or at least scare him off his political causes. As Billy Bob investigates, he discovers a web of intrigue surrounding the case and its players: Johnny's girlfriend, Amber Finley, as reckless as she is defiant -- and the daughter of one of Montana's U.S. senators; Darrel McComb, a Missoula police detective who is obsessed with Amber; and Seth Masterson, an enigmatic government agent whose presence in town makes Billy Bob wonder why Washington has become so concerned with an obscure murder case on the fringes of the Bitterroot Mountains.

As complications mount and the dead bodies multiply, Billy Bob is drawn closer to the truth behind Johnny American Horse's arrest -- and discovers a greater danger to himself and to his whole family. How Billy Bob strikes back at evil and protects his kin is the masterful triumph of In the Moon of Red Ponies.

Beautifully written, with an intriguing plot and characters whose conflicts seem as real as life itself, this novel shows James Lee Burke again in the top form that has made him a critical favorite and a national bestseller.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #184742 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 416 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780743466646
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
In this top-notch fourth novel in Burke's series featuring ex–Texas Ranger attorney Billy Bob Holland, Billy Bob has moved his family and practice to the pastoral city of Missoula, Mont., the setting of his last adventure (Bitterroot, 2001), only to discover that the psychopathic ex-biker/rodeo clown, Wyatt Dixon (who buried Billy Bob's private investigator wife, Temple, alive), is out of prison on a technicality and claiming to be a born-again Christian. Billy Bob befriends alcoholic Desert Storm hero Johnny American Horse, a sometime breeder of horses and eco-activist who—when not in the drunk tank—is carrying on a passionate affair with Amber Finley, the daughter of Romulus Finley, a vindictive and bigoted powerful U.S. senator. When Johnny is suspected of murdering the hit man who invaded his home as well as masterminding the burglary of Global Research (a high-tech agricultural lab), making off with its computer files, the action picks up quickly. Noted for quirky characters and intricate plots, Burke introduces demon-driven sheriff's deputy Darrel McComb—an ex–war hero and former mercenary pilot who flew cocaine for the contras—who has an erotic fixation on Amber. Factor in private security agency chief Greta Lundstrum, FBI agent Seth Masterson and Karsten Mabus, CEO of the company that owns Global Research, and the mayhem builds to a gripping, spine-tingling finale.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Burke sets his fourth Billy Bob Holland crime drama on the edge of the Bitterroot Mountains in Montana. This fast-paced mystery occasionally slows to a tumbleweed pace so the author can comment on the treatment of Native Americans, corporate misuses of the environment, and governmental intrusion into privacy. But when his intriguing characters demand equal attention, Burke crafts action sequences so realistic you can practically smell the gunpowder and sweat. Some critics cite gratuitous plotting and uneven characters. But with the reappearance of homicidal rodeo clown Wyatt Dixon (who buried the hero’s wife alive in the third installment, Bitteroot), most agree that Ponies is the best yet in the series.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist
The similarity between Burke's more recent Billy Bob Holland series and his celebrated Dave Robicheaux novels inevitably interferes with our ability to give the Hollands their due. Yes, former Texas Ranger turned Montana lawyer Holland is, in many ways, a Big Sky version of ragin' Cajun Robicheaux. They have both found a corner of paradise and want desperately to protect it from the encroachments of modern life; they both are prone to violence and often jeopardize their loved ones out of the all-consuming desire to protect them; and they invariably must tangle with one or both of Burke's twin towers of evil: malignant white trash and viciously bent rich people. But despite all that, despite our wish that a writer of Burke's great talent might have used a new series to head toward uncharted waters, it's time to stop picking on Billy Bob Holland. This latest entry in the series, in which Holland attempts to help an idealistic Indian ecoterrorist and winds up antagonizing a power-broking congressman, offers the perfect opportunity to let Billy Bob stand on his own feet. The familiar themes are all here, but Burke puts some new spins on them: the white-trash antagonist reveals surprising depths of character; Billy Bob stops to smell the roses; and even the square-off with the power broker feels less like an Old Testament free-for-all and more like the kind of attenuated skirmish that defines our more circumscribed contemporary world. Yes, Billy Bob is cut from familiar cloth, but admit it, he wears it well. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

I go Robicheaux
Billy Bob Holland is back, ghost partner and all, but now we also have Native American visions and presences. Maybe this worked better in In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead because bayou swamps are more conducive to visions than the clear air of the mountains. For avid Burke readers, this may mark an important artistic move by the author. He may be attempting the sort of shift into psychological probing of the character as happened in the Robicheaux series as in Mist, Dave became more than just a two fisted, alcoholic ex-New Orleans cop, and Burke showed us his own and his character's history and attachment to the culture of Louisiana. I did not really like that work, but looking back I see how Burke was making a shift from merely popular to what is a Faulknerian view. Although I cannot recall which novel has the line to the effect "When I hear that song [Jolie Blonde] I could cry for the culture that is disappearing," it certainly places that series in important company.

This is by way of excuse for a much lower opinion of Moon of Red Ponies. Now, I have read Burke's earlier work. Rifle toting, mountain loggers and cowboys. Out of work and out of Jail, or in. So I see he might be trying to develop his ex-Ranger hero along the lines of Dave Robicheaux; he hasn't done it yet. No sympathetic Alafair , no Baptiste, no colleagues with some understanding, just Billy Bob and his hot tempered wife against the world.

If you are reading this review to decide on spending the full retail, I say go ahead if you are an experienced Burke reader and want to understand his entire corpus. If you are just starting to read Burke, however, go back and get a copy of Jolie Blon's Bounce, Cadillac Jukebox or even Last Car to Elysian Fields or maybe White Doves, hold off on this one until you are a fan.

An ambitious failure
James Lee Burke is a master of scenic description with a novelist's grasp of the good and bad impulses that motivate people. Having read some of his early fiction about New Orleans detective Dave Robicheaux, I expected In the Moon of Red Ponies to be a satisfying excursion through the world of what might be called "Western Noir," as though this book were the progeny of a mating between "Farewell, My Lovely" and "Lonesome Dove."

I was half-right. The book is "Western Noir," but perhaps its most obvious literary antecedent is John Steinbeck's "East of Eden." Yes, that comparison puts Burke in fast company. On the whole, however, I can't recommend "In the Moon of Red Ponies," and would have to call it an ambitious failure.

The most significant problem with the book is its protagonist, Billy Bob Holland. Burke makes Holland a Texas Ranger turned Montana lawyer. He's as stubborn as you'd expect. He's also unrelentingly morose, which means he suffers in comparison to the other characters in the book. Psychotic rodeo clown Wyatt Dixon, for example, is painted as an extreme villain who had nearly killed Billy Bob's wife in a previous book. But Dixon -- in spite of the chemical cocktail he drinks on court orders to maintain a semblance of moral and social equilibrium -- proves better and wiser company than Holland.

When two men break into Dixon's rural home while he's having breakfast, he surprises them with a cheerful "howdy doodle, boys" before savaging them with the iron skillet in his hand. Holland, by contrast, broods his way through all 336 pages. In mayhem or in calm, he's more stoic and less accessible than his nemesis or "Johnny American Horse," the American Indian activist whose dreams give the book its title.

Midway through the story, Burke's sermons about the evils of corporations and the perfidy of the federal government begin to wear thin. We get them coming and going: from Billy Bob, from Johnny, and from a lonely cop.

The political angle colors an industrial burglary for which American Indian activists are prime suspects, but it struck me as more heavy-handed than it should have been. To push the book even further from literature and into "beach read" territory, agony aunt Billy Bob Holland crosses paths with a Foghorn Leghorn-type of United States Senator and his hot young blue-eyed daughter (the rebel dating "beneath her station").

Rule of thumb: When a cheerfully deranged psychopath and an activist who never says much make a better impression than the protagonist of your novel, a rewrite may be in order.

We need the real Burke back
I am a huge Burke fan, having read virtually all that he has written. This book and the previous one for that matter are decided drop offs from previous work. The story, plot, his fascinating sentences are just not up to his previous works. I used to read his books slowly to just enjoy the dialogue and the fellings his stories evoke. I read this book just to be finished so I could go on to something else. Read his early books they are brilliant, some of the best books I've ever read.