Burke is the author that a woman in a bookstore at Heathrow suggested, so now I've gotten thru one of his books -- and it was a good one. East Coast Don already reported on a Burke novel – see June 2009, In the Electric Mist, which took place in Louisiana. This story, Rain Gods, takes place in South Texas where nine Thai women are being smuggled into the country to be prostitutes, but they are smugglers themselves who happen to have swallowed a bunch of balloons filled with heroin. A guy who owns an escort service and house of ill repute, Nick Dolan (married with children), decides to highjack the girls to be prostitutes, but he does not know about the heroin in their stomachs. In the process of getting the girls into the US, the ultimate bad ass psychopath, Preacher Jack Collins decides the women are complaining to much, so he kills them all with his Thompson machine gun, then buries then in shallow graves with the intent of coming back later to cut out the heroin-filled balloons. An Iraq war veteran, Pete Florez, overhears the shooting and sees what has happened. Pete is with a woman who has a nearly terminal case of rescue fantasy. Pete calls the cops, and this is where the protagonist enters, Sheriff Hackberry Holland. (How about that for an entertaining name?) So, now the girls and the heroin are gone, and lots of bad guys are upset about their losses. What is unique about this book is the long list of bad buys who have shifting alliances. The short list is Hugo Cistranos, Artie Rooney, and Joseph Sholokof, all of whom play important roles behind the scenes. After this book by Burke, I am clearly willing to try another one by him. His character development is good, and it kept me very interested.
West Coast Don
Burke is hard to beat. After reading Confederate Dead, I see the male lead in each book played by Tommy Lee Jones. I have another Burke title on my nightstand.
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