The Billy Bob Holland novels of James Lee Burke

Well here we are back for an oil change and we're sticking with James Lee Burke, only this time it's his western character, name of Billy Bob Holland. But look, I have to warn you, this can be heavy duty stuff - SAE 90 gear oil to cushion some heavy haulage.

The West has been a mythical landscape for American books and films for more than a century, and these novels continue firmly in that tradition; just like the Overflow or the Snowy for Australians.

Reminds me of the story Pa Russell used to tell when he was droving cattle up the Paroo one year, that's on the Overflow you know, where Clancy who was immortalised twice by Banjo Patterson come from. Must have been some time in the early 20s just after Pop come back from the war. It's around sundown and he sees a campfire in the distance so he rides over and there's this swagman with a red kelpie sitting at a tree stump with a chess board between them.
"How are you goin'" says Pa.
"Alright," says the swaggie, concentrating on the game.
"You must have a pretty smart dog there," comments Pa.
"What d'yer mean?" says the swaggie, looking up indignantly, "I win just as often as he does."
Yeah, they're a funny lot up that way, and I don't mean just the dogs.

Anyway back to Billy Bob, the one-time Texan Ranger turned PI, the settings are Texas and Montana, the latter affording some nice fly fishing action. Novels featuring Billy Bob so far are:

Cimarron Rose (1997)
Heartwood (1999
Bitterroot (2001)
In the Moon of Red Ponies (2004)

This extract is from the opening of Heartwood and touches on the back story of L.Q. Navarro, Billy Bob's former partner in the Texas Rangers whose ghost still visits him, and a whole lot more besides.

"It would be easy to say we resented Earl Deitrich because he was rich. Maybe to a degree we did. He grew up in River Oaks, down in Houston, in an enormous white mansion set up on a hillock surrounded by shade trees. Its size and seclusion separated it even from the Midas levels of wealth that characterized his few neighbors. But our problem with him was not simply his money.

He was an officer, on leave from the army, when he came to the town of Deaf Smith, up in the Texas hill country, where the working classes wrestled drill bits and waited tables and the new rich chewed on toothpicks at the country club. He used his wealth to hold up a mirror to our inadequacies and take Peggy Jean Murphy from our midst, then brought her back to us as his wife and possession, almost as though she were on display.

Peggy Jean Murphy, who was heart-breakingly beautiful, who lived in our dreams, who commanded such inclusive respect the roughest kids in the West End dared not make a loose remark about her lest they be punched senseless by their own kind.

Earl Deitrich made us realize that our moments on the dance floor with her at high school proms and the romantic fantasies we entertained about marriage to her had always been the vanity of blue-collar kids who had never been in the running at all. Maybe even the high school quarterback she'd loved before he'd been drafted and killed on the Mekong had not been in the running, either.

But that was a long time ago. I tried not to think about Peggy Jean anymore. She and Earl lived abroad and in Montana much of the year and I didn't have occasion to see them, or to regret the decisions that led me into law enforcement on the border and the months of unrecorded and officially denied nocturnal raids into Coahuila, where a playing card emblazoned with the badge of the Texas Rangers was stuffed into the mouths of the dead.

But try as I might, I would never forget the spring afternoon when Peggy Jean got down from the back of my horse and walked with me into a woods above the river and allowed me to lose my virginity inside her.

When I rose from her hot body, her pale blue eyes were empty, staring at the clouds above the pine tops. I wanted her to say something, but she didn't.

'I don't guess I got a lot of experience at this,' I said.

She ran her hand down my arm and held my fingers. There were blades of grass on her shoulders and breasts.

'You were fine, Billy Bob,' she said.

Then I knew she had not made love to me but to a soldier who had died in Vietnam.

'You want to go to a movie tonight?' I asked.

'Maybe tomorrow,' she replied.

'I like you a whole lot. I know when you lose somebody, it takes a long—'

'We'd better go back now. We'll go to the movie tomorrow. I promise,' she said.

But no one competes well with ghosts. At least no one in our town did, not until Earl Deitrich arrived."

Not bad is it, but there's more. Just as he captures the Louisiana setting in the Dave Robicheaux books and makes it integral to the action; in the Western books JLB writes lyrically of the landscape of the American mid-west and its people and captures the nuances of language beautifully. JLB's earlier novel with a Montana setting, the Lost Get-Back Boogie (1986), also deserves a mention here, not only because it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, but because it shows the early development of his noir style in novel form. The protagonist is a young guitar player on parole and the Blues runs through this book like a hammered-on bass lick in a John Lee Hooker song. Or for that matter Johnny O'Keefe's left foot on stage at the Big Show in the Sydney Stadium concert October 1957; if my memory serves me I was with a girl named Sharon but that's another story.

James Lee Burke has been a prolific writer, who is probably now at the peak of his powers and only improves with age, so once you get hooked, well you can look forward to each book as the start of a new adventure.

Like arriving on a wilderness river maybe the upper Thredbo or the Snowy, it's Spring and the water is running high and ice cold against the granite boulders, the morning sun angles through the mist and reflects off the wings of mayfly hatching in the eddies, you set up the rod, thread line with cold fingers and tie on a Kosciusko dun, measure the back cast and flick out the fly into the bubble line, watch the leader straighten and mend line upstream with a quick twitch of the rod tip, there's the swirl of a big trout, you feel the rod flex as the line tightens and you are reconnected once more to the wilderness world of the ancestors, the shaman who takes on the identity of the animal spirits, and all other thoughts fall away...

Now while we're on the subject of hard living blokes, you might remember how I said I had to give up the smokes a while back. Well it's true and and I've never regretted it. You just think about - it's no use a bloke having a family if he's not there any more to look after them, it's a man's responsibility.

I've known some of these blokes who wouldn't give it up, I've been to their funerals, and let me tell you it's not a pretty site. Not only are they turning their wives and kids into widows and orphans, but they're missing out on a lot of good fishing time as well, either because they're too flaming sick or they karked it.

So get real and get the missus of them too if you have too, or so help me I'll come around to your place and put matters straight for you. Alright I'll stop now, read the books I mentioned and remember: in the Bush a bloke always shoots his own dog; in life a man takes responsibility for his actions and their consequences. One time I had to shoot a favourite dog after he bit a child, not his fault but there you are; think about it. So I'll leave you with that and it's hooroo from your mate Jacko until next time.

The Dave Robicheaux novels of James Lee Burke

G'day, it's your mate Jack Russell here again. Well I just got back from seeing the quack. Had me general check-up as well as the blokes special one in the trouser department. You may not actually know what that involves but if you're getting to be a codger like me, well you make sure you get one. And there's no need to feel embarrassed or anything. The quack takes it in his stride because they're trained for it, and they cop a few quid as well. After all it's nothing compared to what the missus has to put up with. And it might mean you'll get a few more years of fishing you hadn't counted on, so that's a bonus. Here is some more information if you're interested.

Now listen, this bloke James Lee Burke is the dinkum oil and you can take my word on it. Why don't I start by quoting a few reviews.

"He writes explosively about crime and elegiacally about America. And he does so with style and passion enough to turn admirers into addicts. Burke is the only author guaranteed to make me bolt meals and lose sleep. No one else in the business is writing fiction like this." Literary Review

"No one handles complex plots better than Burke; no one is better at creating characters, good, bad or evil and above all no one writes with such a sensuous appreciation of life, with so poetic yet meticulous observation of detail." London Evening Standard.

He's an American writer but don't let that stop you because he's one of the best. That reminds me of the visiting Texan that Granddad Russel was taking for a ride around the property one day.
"So how big exactly is this here spread of yours Mr Russell?" says Tex.
"Well you'd have to ride all day to get to the boundary", says Pa.
"Hell" says the big feller, "On my spread I could ride all day and never reach the boundary".
"Yeah" says Pa, "I had a horse like that once".

Anyway back to the author review. The setting is Louisiana and the tucker is Cajun, and if you haven't tried it, you should get the Missus to cook some up. Or better still give it a go yourself because it's easy to cook - being based on barbecuing, smoking, grilling and one pot stews. All the stuff a bloke can cook, and the way JLB describes it, will have you licking your lips for some. Ingredients like fried oysters and shrimp in what they call Po' boy sandwiches, that's what they call prawns as you may know. As well as wild caught trout and redfish and hunted game, and catfish which they say can be an acquired taste, it's all stuff a bloke would recognise and know how to handle. Just skin 'em or scale 'em, gut 'em, chuck on some seasoning and on the grill or in the smoker they go, no worries.

Now if you really get into these books you'll want to listen to some Cajun music as well and good stuff it is too. In fact Jolie Blon's Bounce illustrated here in one such. You might remember the live version by the Sir Douglas Quintet, an innovative late 60s band that incorporated Tex-Mex and Cajun styles into rock music, the Mendocino album is here in the shed somewhere, well worth a spin on the platter.

But it's not just tucker because the way JLB describes the swamps, the insects, the heat, the sunsets and sunrises, the smells of mud and rotting vegetation, the behaviour of fish and animals, there's fishing action too - you feel like you're right there and once that happens, well you're really reading. In fact the setting is so powerful in these stories that it becomes like another character that controls all others, bit like the drought does to us farmers and graziers.

Now the protagonist, that's the hero, is a feller name of Dave Robicheaux , he's a French Cajun and they're a people with a fascinating history. He's also a recovering alcoholic, a police detective, and a man with his own inner demons, and we've all had them at one time or another. And he's a bloke for whom the ghosts of the past are always present, which is a pretty accurate way of looking at life I reckon. Like when I'm replacing some old eaten out timber fence posts that granddad Russell split with his own hands and the sweat of his brow, or come across the lonely grave of some old fossicker out in the bush and it gives a feller pause to think.

Anyway Dave writes in the first person and you know how I like that in a book. But JLB has a way of overcoming the limitations of this style by slipping in linking passages of third person narrative that are so natural you don't even realise that it's not Dave talking. And if you're a student of language, well the dialogue is pure gold. And he can write a sentence too. But it's time I stopped rabbiting on and we hear from the man himself. This is from the opening of Jolie Blon's Bounce where he first meets Legion, his nemesis in several stories.

"Farther down Main were Hopkins and Railroad Avenues, like ancil­lary conduits into part of the town's history and geography that people did not talk about publicly. When I went to the icehouse on Saturday af­ternoons with my father, I would look furtively down Railroad at the rows of paintless cribs on each side of the train tracks and at the blowsy women who sat on the stoops, hung over, their knees apart under their loose cotton dresses, perhaps dipping beer out of a bucket two Negro boys carried on a broom handle from Hattie Fontenot's bar. I came to learn early on that no venal or meretricious enterprise ex­isted without a community's consent. I thought I understood the nature of evil. I learned at age twelve I did not.

My half brother, who was fifteen months younger than I, was named Jimmie Robicheaux. His mother was a prostitute in Abbeville, but he and I were raised together, largely by our father, known as Big Aldous, who was a trapper and commercial fisherman and offshore derrick man. As children Jimmie and I were inseparable. On summer evenings we used to go to the lighted ball games at City Park and slip into the serving lines at barbecues and crab boils at the open-air pavilions. Our larceny was of an innocent kind, I suppose, and we were quite proud of our­selves when we thought we had outsmarted the adult world. On a hot August night, with lightning rippling through the thunder-heads over the Gulf of Mexico, Jimmie and I were walking through a cluster of oak trees on the edge of the park when we saw an old Ford au­tomobile with two couples inside, one in the front seat, one in the back. We heard a woman moan, then her voice mount in volume and inten­sity. We stared openmouthed as we saw the woman's top half arch back­ward, her naked breasts lit by the glow from a picnic pavilion, her mouth wide with orgasm.

We started to change direction, but the woman was laughing now, her face sweaty and bright at the open window. "Hey, boy, you know what we been doin'? It make my pussy feel so good. Hey, come here, you. We been fuckin', boy," she said. It should have been over, a bad encounter with white trash, probably drunk, caught in barnyard copulation. But the real moment was just be­ginning. The man behind the steering wheel lit a cigarette, his face flar­ing like paste in the flame, then stepped out on the gravel. There were tattoos, like dark blue smears, inside his forearms. He used two fingers to lift the blade out of a pocketknife.
"You like to look t'rew people's windows?" he asked.
"No, sir," I said.
"They're just kids, Legion," the woman in back said, putting on her shirt.
"Maybe that's what they gonna always be," the man said. I had thought his words were intended simply to frighten us. But I could see his face clearly now, the hair combed back like black pitch, the narrow white face with vertical lines in it, the eyes that could look upon a child as the source of his rage against the universe.

Then Jimmie and I were running in the darkness, our hearts pound­ing, forever changed by the knowledge that the world contains pockets of evil that are as dark as the inside of a leather bag. Because my father was out of town, we ran all the way to the icehouse on Railroad Avenue, behind which was the lit and neatly tended house of Giro Shanahan, the only man my father ever spoke of with total ad­miration and trust. Later in life I would learn why my father had such great respect for his friend. Giro Shanahan was one of those rare individuals who would suffer in silence and let the world do him severe injury in order to pro­tect those whom he loved."

So don't let me hear you say you can't find a thing to read, because this stuff is pure 20w50 multi-grade for smoother running in older engines, so get down to your local public library pronto and check the shelf under crime fiction - Burke, James Lee, you won't regret it. So it's cheers from your old mate Jacko until we meet again.

The Flashman novels of George Macdonald Fraser

With the recent dry weather the fishing has been a bit quiet so I thought I’d put pen to paper and give you the good oil on a writer that a bloke wouldn’t mind spending a bit of time with, and while book reviews are all well and good, I can’t help feeling that a bloke needs to get hold of a decent author that he can follow up on and get to know, because once you’ve enjoyed one book, if they’re any good, you’ll be wanting more in the same vein.

I see George MacDonald Fraser has recently passed on at the age of 82. A traditionalist, he was an outspoken patron of the British Weights and Measures Association which opposes compulsory conversion to the metric system, now there’s a man after me own heart.

George worked as a newspaperman after serving in a Border regiment under General Slim in Burma in 1945 (see Quartered Safe Out Here, below), and came to fame with the Flashman novels about the adventures of the villain of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, name of Harry Flashman.

Now Flashman is a real lad with the ladies and gets into plenty of scrapes, he writes in the first person so you feel like you’re right there with him whether it’s bedding Lola Montez, riding with Custer at Little Big Horn or at the charge of the Light Brigade. You can’t beat the clarity of writing, the historical accuracy and the way in which human weakness is portrayed in such familiar terms. George’s view of history as the escapades of cads and villains, is in my book a lot more plausible than the official accounts.

Flashman’s adventures as a soldier of the Queen, old Queen Vicky that is, are absolutely gripping, and you might learn a bit of history along the way. I don’t mind telling you if my old history teacher had brought the past to life with half the flair and skill that Flashman does, I might have ended up making a living from it, that’s how good he is, and if a bloke can do that well he’s all right in my book.

The one to start with is Flashman, then read the next eleven in any order you like; they’re all so good you won’t mind coming back and reading some again to fill in the gaps. And once you’ve read all the Flashman books, get your hands on anything else GMF wrote, like the MacAuslan stories about life in a Scottish regiment after the War.

But before we go I'll just add a note about Quartered Safe Out Here: a recollection of the War in Burma (1992); this is GMF's highly personal account of the Burma war, an unusual and possibly unique view of war in close-up: fearsome, sometimes appalling, often funny, and always a disturbing reminder of how the world and its attitudes to soldiers and soldiering have changed in 50 years. And this is how it starts, with a few words from one of our great British poets and writers from an earlier age, talk about bring back some memories! It's enough to make the hairs on the back of a bloke's neck stand up!

You may talk o' gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out here,
An' you're sent to penny fights an' Aldershot it,
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Rudyard Kipling, Gunga Din

So take my advice on this because I wouldn’t steer you wrong and give George and Flashy a go, you won’t regret it, class this as sae 5w40, easy driving, starts well any time but can handle some hard going as well.

Until next time it’s cheers from your mate Jacko and good reading.

see link for George_MacDonald_Fraser

The Flashman series constitute Fraser's major works. There are 12 books in the series, namely:
• Flashman (1969)
• Royal Flash (1970)
• Flash for Freedom! (1971)
• Flashman at the Charge (1973)
• Flashman in the Great Game (1975)
• Flashman's Lady (1977)
• Flashman and the Redskins (1982)
• Flashman and the Dragon (1985)
• Flashman and the Mountain of Light (1990)
• Flashman and the Angel of the Lord (1994)
• Flashman and the Tiger (1999)
• Flashman on the March (2005)

A Shed is Built

G'day,

My name's Jack, some people call me Jacko and I don't mind.

Well I'm having a go at this new Library 2.0 so I can start me own blog about books for blokes, and I have to tell you it's not that bad. The first thing I had to do was get me old computer out of the shed where the chooks had been roosting on it and give it a good clean up and it must have worked because I'm writing this. Then I had the bloke from the PMG, or whatever they call it these days, come round and plug me into the internet, and that must have worked because here we all are and she's rosy!

Now week one was alright, I did that in me lunch break, me and Black Beauty, she's me dog; well we brought a mob of ewes and lambs in for drenching so we took a smoko, not real smokes you understand because I had to give them up, more about that later; anyway I have to tell you it's marvelous what they can do these days. The videos were pretty good, not Chips Rafferty you understand, more like some of the training films we had in the army about staying clear of social diseases, but pretty informative they were just the same.

So here's what we started with:

1. What do you write about?

Well I think it's time we had something about books worth reading for ordinary blokes, blokes of all ages and backgrounds so that's what this'll be and I'd appreciate all the help I can get; so I'll be calling on some of the younger folk in the district as well as codgers like meself to let us have the benefit of their experience, and what they've been reading lately and why you wouldn't be wasting your time getting along to the library, next time you're in town at the farmers' co-op or the mobile pulls up out the front.

2. What do you hope to learn from the program?

Learn! Cripes what isn't there to learn? It's like when I first started shearing and you had to get to grips with the machinery before the Boss'd let you near a sheep. Well as you can see by this here blog, I'd like to pass on some of me thoughts about books and reading to other blokes, and any sheilas too, that might be interested. And I wouldn't mind having some of those mini videos in it as well because they might make it interesting, especially for sheep shearing instruction and so on. And the way you can link to other blogs - well that's all to the good, especially if they're better ones than your humble effort.

3. What do you think about Lifelong Learning?

Well I'll tell you, when Grandad Russell first started shearing with the old hand shears, that was just before the big shearers' strike up in Barcaldine in 1891, he was there you know, and he shore with the great Jacky Howe in 1892, Jacky set the hand shearing record of 321 with the tongs then that still hasn't been broken, they reckon a blade shearer opens and closes his hand an average of 410 times while shearing one sheep; anyway he reckoned the old clippers were all he'd ever need to make a quid, but what happened - along came the mechanical blades, and then you got them wide combs and before you know it you're back to square one! A bloke can never stop learning, that's what I say, and if there's a bloke out there who thinks you can, well he needs a good boot up the rear, pardon my language, because things are never the same from one day to the next.

4. What other blogs have you discovered? What do you like about them?

Well one of the first blogs I found is by a bloke called Merryjack, there's plenty of stuff on fishing, which is always good, some nice photos, he covers the great writers - Shakespeare he's there, he's a thoughtful sort of cove and doesn't mind who knows it:

http://jmerriman.blogspot.com/

Now I've always been fascinated by the words we use, even Black Beauty can understand at least a dozen, and this isn't too bad:

http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/

I'll be keeping you posted on new blogs and so on as they come to light, so keep an eye peeled.

5. Can you see a use for blogs inside the Library?

Use them? How can a library live without them! I've always used the public library, in my day it was the Mechanic's Institute next to the billiard room, "No Loitering" the sign said. Anyway I'll be looking out for blogs by some of me mates to see what they've come up with; I'd like to get news about activities in the library for kids so me daughter can take the kids to town for an outing; I'd like to hear what some of the other blokes, and this includes some of the very fine lady farmers and graziers in the district, think about developments in the live sheep trade for instance and I reckon the library could be linking us to the latest livestock prices and market reports via their subscription services and we could find them in a one stop shop without having to wade through a whole lot of web pages like I've seen the kiddies do for their homework.

Some of the young folk in the more isolated properties could do with an informal point of contact with the library for their own interests and to hear about new books and services. And then you have the folk who can't get out for one reason or another, maybe they're in a wheel chair or have difficulty getting around - well they might like to be able to discuss things with each other and find out about new library books and services while requesting a book from the book mobile.

6. How about blogging for a client audience?

I'm careful how I used that word client because it takes me back to some of the army training films we use to see but I won't go into that here. Anyway I checked out the IBM guidelines, now they're a firm with a good reputation, the Missus learned to type on one of their typewriters so I've heard, and if a bloke was working for the Council and I don't mean leaning on a shovel, he'd be wise to follow their advice if he was setting himself up on a blog from the library.

Well that's about it from your mate Jacko this time around.