Amazon.co.uk Review
James Lee Burke's thrillers are all about regrets for sins you have to live with. In the Moon of Red Ponies is almost crowded with men trying to atone. As well as Burke's burned-out Texas Ranger, Billy Bob Holland, we have crazed rodeo rider Wyatt Dixon, the villain of Burke's earlier Bitterroot who is now trying to make up for burying Holland's wife alive. There is counter-intelligence-thug-turned-cop Darrel, a racist lout haunted by the things he did for his country, and Johnny American Horse, whose environmental activism is largely directed by visions and who is aware he has involved too many of his friends and lovers in things that may get them killed.
Burke is brilliant on these men and their inability to trust each other; he is less good at thinking himself into the heads of the book's real villains, the men in suits who find and hire killers and despoil the land. It seems odd to complain of this in a book so full of shootings and torture and desperate flights across wild country--but some of the scenes in which sinister corporations damage lives with a stroke of the pen are melodramatic in a way that is not always worthy of a writer as sensitive to nuance as Burke. --Roz Kaveney
Review
'Of all American crime fiction writers James Lee Burke could be described as the most literary, with his grand themes of redemption and atonement. In this .... Burke addresses the big question of the human potential to do good or evil.' (DAILY MAIL )
'Rich, lyrical narrative, peopled by ghosts and visions ... What he's really writing about, I suspect, is redemption and he does so with passion, skill and a generous heart. Read it and be refreshed.' (Philip Oakes LITERARY REVIEW )
'Cryptic and clever' (THE MIRROR )
'Burke's lyrical descriptions of the beauty of the boundless skies, mountains, forests and wildlife of Montana are a constant counterpoint to the brutality that Billy Bob has to deal with. His sympathy for the plight of Native Americans and regret for all they have lost push this book way beyond thriller, yet Burke manages to drive the story along with relentless pace and ever-mounting suspense.' (IRISH INDEPEDENT )
'The best book James Lee Burke has written ... it's likely to be a very long time before anything as good, let alone better, comes along.' (TJ Binyon EVENING STANDARD )
'What keeps the pages turning is the pace and unpretentious clarity of the writing, along with the tension generated by the unpredictable collison of motives and interests.' (Mike Philips THE GUARDIAN )
'Burke has got it right this time, creating a modern western in which Holland oscillates between courtroom law and the law of the gun. Like all his fiction, it deftly blends lyrical passages and penetrating psychological studies' (SUNDAY TIMES )
'Thrilling stuff.' (THE OBSERVER )
'Burke's distinctive narrative style and a story which grips from the beginning make a another first-rate read.' (Susanna Yager SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )
'...he writes like an angel' (James Naughtie THE HERALD )
'Rich, lyrical narrative, peopled by ghosts and visions ... What he's really writing about, I suspect, is redemption and he does so with passion, skill and a generous heart. Read it and be refreshed.' (Philip Oakes LITERARY REVIEW )
'Cryptic and clever' (THE MIRROR )
'Burke's lyrical descriptions of the beauty of the boundless skies, mountains, forests and wildlife of Montana are a constant counterpoint to the brutality that Billy Bob has to deal with. His sympathy for the plight of Native Americans and regret for all they have lost push this book way beyond thriller, yet Burke manages to drive the story along with relentless pace and ever-mounting suspense.' (IRISH INDEPEDENT )
'The best book James Lee Burke has written ... it's likely to be a very long time before anything as good, let alone better, comes along.' (TJ Binyon EVENING STANDARD )
'What keeps the pages turning is the pace and unpretentious clarity of the writing, along with the tension generated by the unpredictable collison of motives and interests.' (Mike Philips THE GUARDIAN )
'Burke has got it right this time, creating a modern western in which Holland oscillates between courtroom law and the law of the gun. Like all his fiction, it deftly blends lyrical passages and penetrating psychological studies' (SUNDAY TIMES )
'Thrilling stuff.' (THE OBSERVER )
'Burke's distinctive narrative style and a story which grips from the beginning make a another first-rate read.' (Susanna Yager SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )
'...he writes like an angel' (James Naughtie THE HERALD )
