Feast Day of Fools [Hardcover]

"Feast Day Of Fools" is vintage James Lee Burke. At 460 pages, it is a jumbo of a book and takes time to get to its cruising altitude, but once it does.....WOW.

"Feast Day" is set in the drug, arms and people smuggling borderlands of Southwest Texas, a physical and metaphorical landscape ideally suited to Burke's eschatological battles between good and evil. Sheriff Hackberry Holland (in his second appearance after being recalled from a 40 year hiatus in Rain Gods, published in 2009) and his team of deputies investigate the brutal murder of a DEA informant and the related disappearance of an escaped hostage who carries with him vital military secrets. They are not the only ones in the chase: the Feds, shadowy vigilantes with unspecified links to the government, a Mexican gang and a Russian led criminal group also show up. "Preacher Jack" Collins, the demonic killer who escaped justice in "Rain Gods," also inserts himself though it is debatable as to which side he is on.

Burke's characters are colorful and complex. In addition to the various well-sketched thugs, there is La Magdalena, a Chinese missionary with a CIA past, the Reverend Cody Daniels, a cowboy preacher out to expunge his own sins, and Danny Boy Lorca, a loser who witnessed the murder and decides to make amends. The good guys all have their demons and the villains (mostly) have flashes of honour.

Hack himself is a peculiar hero. He is almost 80 years old but manages physical feats and intimidates his foes as if he were in his prime. He is haunted by (among many things) his memories of the Korean War. One forms the impression that Burke would have preferred to make it the War Between the States but concluded that it would stretch credulity even further if his hero was aged 160. He is a combination of wise old man and avenging angel. He incorporates all the values of Burke's other series heroes: Dave Robicheaux and Billy Bob Holland (whom I think I remember to be a relative).

Burke's writing is sui generis. It goes well beyond the crime genre and comparisons with Faulkner, McCarthy and O'Connor are justified. His prose is poetic and Biblical, full of allusions and images; his evocations of landscapes and the memories and ghosts that inhabit them are haunting and lyrical; his characters converse in a mixture of old world courtesies and scatological insults that is unique. No one speaks like this in the real world, but it is totally believable in the universe that Burke creates.

Fans of James Lee Burke will count this book among his finest works. New readers should persevere through its relatively dense build-up. You will be glad that you did so and the entire oeuvre of this astonishing author awaits you.

Flaws duly noted - it's indeed a surprisingly commercial turn of writing for JLB in many ways. However, this results in a high degree of sustained narrative drive. By contrast, the lack of same has sometime been, in the past, the weakest aspect of his otherwise amazing books. Strangely, the florid descriptive style made Texas live for me more than the renowned Dave Robicheaux novels ever did for Louisiana. So despite any of those flaws, it's simply the James Lee Burke book I've enjoyed most, and finished quickest, in ages. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed it, would happily return to Sheriff Hackberry's Texas mythi-verse any time Burke wishes to lead the way, and did not miss the loophole through which the delectably sordid villain escaped to live another plot ... Would ideally have awarded 4.5 stars. If Burke could combine ALL the best of his previous works with Hackberry's character family ... five stars easy.

Down by the border with Mexico there are people-runners, drug mules, guns-for-sale, psychos and the beginnings of lawlessness that lets the psychos have their way.

Back from a recent US trip, not far from this area, I was amazed by how JLB's characters come as much from his imagination as from reality. Whereas in the past I thought he'd hammed up his description of low-lifes just a touch (and of course he does)... I hadn't realised what rich pickings there are in the Deep South for his desperados with a bad streak. You see JLB types, slightly worryingly, all over the place.

Anyway, Feast Day of Fools (the title relates to a medieval tradition of letting the local imebeciles have a jamboree once a year to get it out of their systems) describes demi-life goings-on by the border, with Sheriff Hackberry Holland attempting to keep order. There are big issues such as immigration and political intervention where it is not required. There are also vivid scenes of stand-offs between bad guys (in particular mad-man Collins) and other players in the border zone.

The morality of JLB shines through. Why do we go to war in Korea and Vietnam and Iraq (Hackberry has recurring nightmares of serving in Korea) - why do vigilantes take pop shots at immigrants crossing over to USA? Why not just take a step back and see things a bit more clearly, concentrate on "the small pleasures that an orderly life" provides. Less gung-ho... but still some gun.

The descriptions of royal purple skies and hillsides with birdsong and dried out river beds are as enticing as ever. And inner-demons run free - as they always do in Burke's books. The book does take a while to get going, but when it picks up, you are there... and the characters are not -- quite -- as far-fetched and exaggerated as they may perhaps seem.