Feast Day of Fools
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Review
Burke gives us some wonderful dialogue between flawed characters reaching for higher truths, and some wickedly pungent descriptive passages ... superb writing. (Siobhan Murphy METRO )
Menacingly dark but with chinks of glittering perception, Lee Burke is the king of Southern noir. This complicated but utterly compelling tale finds Sheriff Hackberry Holland in a three-way manhunt - and it's the religious maniac who's most disturbing. (Henry Sutton DAILY MIRROR )
His set pieces are sharp and effective and his prose swoops and soars with a lyricism that would make a poet's heart ache with envy. The plot continues to drive you forward but you force yourself to slow down: to savour the quality of the words arranged on the page. (CRIMESQUAD.COM )
Menacingly dark but with chinks of glittering perception, Lee Burke is the king of Southern noir. This complicated but utterly compelling tale finds Sheriff Hackberry Holland in a three-way manhunt - and it's the religious maniac who's most disturbing. (Henry Sutton DAILY MIRROR )
His set pieces are sharp and effective and his prose swoops and soars with a lyricism that would make a poet's heart ache with envy. The plot continues to drive you forward but you force yourself to slow down: to savour the quality of the words arranged on the page. (CRIMESQUAD.COM )
Book Description
A powerful and unforgettable thriller from the acclaimed genre master.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format: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.
"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.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I love James Lee Burke, the plotting, the lyrical sense of place, the characterisations and the sporadic violence, so involving you could be there. But 'Feast Day of fools' is violence upon violence and little lyricism. A hero sherriff drawn from a much earlier book set in East texas, Hack Holland, and set oddly in the unidentified recent past, the book is one long scream of either retributional or semi-recreational violence As though man is the manifestation of nature red in tooth and claw, the sherriff included. There is some unlikely spirituality, some somewhat raw-boned East Texas sex, old Hack Holland up against Russian gangsters, white slavers, mexican drug dealers and all manner of pond life, out of the primeval swamp and into each others faces. You get into it and read it fast but it's the sort of book an author finds nearly completed in a drawer and then abandoned which can be fleshed out and finished to meet the delivery demands of an importunate publisher.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I have always enjoyed Burke's writing. I like the way he brings his characters to life and places them in complex, violent situations within a poetic and mythic writing style. In using the same characters and themes the work is beginning to suffer and becoming stereotypical.
Personally, I found the ending so over-the-top in how the bad guys were defeated that I could not believe it.
I would always read his books because you really feel part of the world and the writing is so good but a movement in a different direction would be welcome.
Personally, I found the ending so over-the-top in how the bad guys were defeated that I could not believe it.
I would always read his books because you really feel part of the world and the writing is so good but a movement in a different direction would be welcome.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Burke did it again
Burke is worth visiting again. He keeps a close focus at the values and decisions you must take if you want to be a decent person. Thanks!
Published 1 month ago by Dan Andersen
A Feast in its own right, I would say
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Published 3 months ago by Calixthe
same old same old
Its good, as (almost) all Burke books are but lets be honest its another variation of the same old story, with variations of the same characters (good and bad) as have been in his... Read more
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The best James Lee Burke for some time? **Minor spoiler**
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. Read more
Published 5 months ago by M. R. Hudson
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