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by James Lee Burke

James_Lee_Burke Thrillers_and_Suspense English
  • ISBN: 1409140318
  • Category: Thriller & Mystery
  • Author: James Lee Burke
  • Subcategory: Thrillers & Suspense
  • Other formats: mobi docx lrf doc
  • Language: English
  • Publisher: Orion Publishing Group (September 1, 2011)
  • Pages: 400 pages
  • FB2 size: 1146 kb
  • EPUB size: 1496 kb
  • Rating: 4.7
  • Votes: 905
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Feast day of fools: a novel, James Lee Burke.

Feast day of fools: a novel, James Lee Burke. p. cm. 1. Texas-Fiction. Chapter one. SOME PEOPLE SAID Danny Boy Lorca’s visions came from the mescal that had fried his brains, or the horse-quirt whippings he took around the ears when he served time on Sugar Land Farm, or the fact he’d been a middleweight club fighter through a string of dust-blown sinkholes where the locals were given a chance to beat up what. was called a tomato can, a fighter who leaked blood every place he was hit, in this case a rumdum Indian who ate his pain and never flinched when his opponents broke their hands on his face.

Packed with lush imagery and allegorical heft, Feast Day of Fools is a tightly wound thriller that reconfirms James Lee Burke’s status as a master storyteller.

When alcoholic ex-boxer Danny Boy Lorca witnesses a man tortured to death in the desert, Hackberry’s investigation leads him to Anton Ling, a mysterious Chinese woman known for sheltering illegals.

James Lee Burke (born December 5, 1936) is an American author, best known for his Dave Robicheaux series

James Lee Burke (born December 5, 1936) is an American author, best known for his Dave Robicheaux series. He has won Edgar Awards for Black Cherry Blues (1990) and Cimarron Rose (1998), and has also been presented with the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The Robicheaux character has been portrayed twice on screen, first by Alec Baldwin (Heaven's Prisoners) and then Tommy Lee Jones (In the Electric Mist).

In this moving collection of short stories, James Lee Burke elegantly marries his flair for gripping storytelling with his lyrical writing style and complex, fascinating character portraits. The backdrop of the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast is a versatile. In the Moon of Red Ponies (Billy Bob Holland, by James Lee Burke.

James Lee Burke is the heavyweight champ, a great American novelist whose work, taken individually or as a whole, is. . Lay Down My Sword and Shield 2. Rain Gods 3. Feast Day of Fools 4. House of the Rising Sun. Dave Robicheaux Series.

James Lee Burke is the heavyweight champ, a great American novelist whose work, taken individually or as a whole, is unsurpassed. A gorgeous prose stylist. Richly deserves to be described now as one of the finest crime writers America has ever produced. The Neon Rain 2. Heaven's Prisoners 3. Black Cherry Blues 4. A Morning for Flamingos 5. A Stained White Radiance 6. In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead 7. Dixie City Jam 8. Burning Angel 9. Cadillac Jukebox 10.

Feast Day of Fools book. James Lee Burke is one of my top five authors. He is probably best known for the Dave Robicheaux novels that follow the life and times of a deputy sheriff in New Iberia, Louisiana.

Another violent and lyrical crime novel from the master, set in the harshly beautiful landscape of south Texas where Sherrif Hackberry Holland (hero of RAIN GODS) is facing more drug-fuelled murder and mayhem from across the Mexican border.
Reviews about A Feast Day of Fools (7):
SING
I won't rehash the story line, as you can get that from the Amazon product page and other reviews.

In my opinion, Burke is one of the literary masters of the era, and this book is yet another of his works of art. His grasp of the language and his ability to paint with words such amazing murals of the human condition and its settings continues to delight me. I love just reading his works and letting the words and images flow over me like a cloak.

His plotting is very complex, as are his characters. They do some really unpredictable things, as is true of real people in real life. This book is no exception; even having read the last Hack Holland book, "Rain Gods", I never could have predicted how this story would turn out.

I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of my immersion -- and that's a carefully selected word, as this book did immerse me -- in the story.

That having been said, there are a couple of things that I find to be distracting clinkers, the primary one being Hack Holland's age. This book, like "Rain Gods", contains plenty of Holland's reminiscences of his days as a POW in the Korean War.

The KOREAN WAR?????

I'm a 62-year-old veteran of the Vietnam War, and I know the aches and pains and creaks and sore joints I have to put up with daily. I can't even imagine what those geezers must feel like even on a good day, yet Holland doesn't seem to suffer the effects of age at all.

This is a problem I've pointed out before in my reviews of series books centered on vets of past wars such as Elvis Cole, Harry Bosch, and yes, even Burke's own Dave Robicheaux. Those guys were all Viet vets, and Holland's war was even further in the past. I just find this so unbelievable that it becomes a distraction.

Still and all, when you put that aside this was a thoroughly enjoyable book, a true piece of literature. A solid 4 stars, maybe 4.5.
Thetalune
At the age of 75 James Lee Burke is showing no signs of slowing down. In this, his 30th novel we find a stark landscape peopled by the morally insane. Sheriff Hackberry Holland returns to his jurisdiction in one of the most savage areas on the planet, the Texas border with Mexico. Readers of "Rain Gods" (2009) will immediately recognize the terrain and Hack Holland's haunted eyes.

Hack is shadowed by ghosts. There are his memories of being tortured as a POW in North Korea. There are his guilty recollections of blackouts and drunken sex sprees in Mexico when he was a younger man. And there is the shadow of his dead wife. She died from ovarian cancer a dozen years ago.

Of course the book opens with a gruesome murder. Soon we are delighted to realize that JLB's most evil villain ever, Preacher Jack Collins, survived after "Rain Gods." Collins does his killing with a Thompson sub machine gun. He's a religious fanatic who has twisted the words of the Bible for his own morally insane purposes.

Then there's the fugitive, a man who is hiding out. The Feds are after him. Criminal cartels want to sell him to the highest bidder. Terrorists will kill to learn his military secrets. The Feds want to shoot him on sight. Hack and his deputy Pam Tibbs are in a race to find him first. Meanwhile the morally insane wreak their terrible vengeance.

This is Burke's best book. He has opened the channel so wide. The words flow. An utter delight to read!
GAMER
I need to start off by saying that I've long been a fan of James Lee Burke. I have been enamored by his descriptive prose. I have enjoyed eccentric characters who speak in unlikely monologues of philosophy, theology and ethics. I have appreciated the dark tone and the complicated moral ambiguity of his novels. But....and I hate to say it.... sometimes too much of a good thing...is, well...frankly downright annoying.

I really struggled to finish this novel. Seriously, how many eccentric characters can exist in one small Texas town? One (maybe two) characters who pontificate about the state of the world, the nature of humanity, and the path to redemption and spirituality can be clever, perhaps even `thought provoking', but when every character in a novel speaks in pretentious monologues and pages are filled with rambling introspection, it quickly loses its charm.

The fact that it's pretentious is a big enough problem, but it also seriously erodes the credibility of the novel. This isn't a light-hearted quirky South Florida crime novel in the spirit of Carl Hiaasen where eccentric characters combine with an outrageous plot in a hilarious satirical romp. This is a serious novel. It's filled with unrelenting despair and cruelty. The fact that none of the characters who populate the novel are believable was a huge problem for me.

Many have mentioned credibility concerns regarding Hack's age. The man is north of 80 but still manages to mix it up with his fists and in the bedroom. I picture Clint Eastwood whenever I think of Hack, but I'm not sure even Dirty Harry has that level of prowess. Personally, this didn't bother me nearly as much as other credibility concerns. One thought that occurred to me throughout this novel was how much it seemed like the events of the novel were happening in a strange bubble. There was no indication ever that Hack reported to anyone, that there was political pressure, media attention, or even a hint that there was a community outside the small circle of players in the novel.

Simply put, this novel tested my patience. I didn't believe that any of the bizarre characters; from the Preacher, to Krill, to La Magdalena, to the Cowboy Minister, to Hack himself were real. This novel is a rambling, tedious, and pretentious exercise in self-indulgence. I may have to give up on Burke. I'm honestly not sure I have what it takes to wade through the prose of another one of his novels.

In the words of Captain Kurtz: "The horror, the horror, the horror...."

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