DATE: Sunday, October 26, 1997              TAG: 9710160706

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review

SOURCE: BY TIM WARREN 

                                            LENGTH:   83 lines

IN NEW SERIES, ECHOES OF THE PAST

CIMARRON ROSE

JAMES LEE BURKE

Hyperion. 304 pp. $24.95

The artistic restlessness that James Lee Burke exhibited in his nine magnificent crime novels featuring Dave Robicheaux is evident in Cimarron Rose, the first book of a new series. It says a lot that Burke has chosen to write a new series just when his Robicheaux books had moved from cult status to best sellers. Except for a few surprising plot holes, Cimarron Rose is as worthy as any of the Robicheaux novels - and, as always, beautifully written.

Like any good crime novelist, Burke isn't so much interested in who committed a crime but why, and what is done to the human spirit in the process. Though he has shifted the locale of the Robicheaux books from the bayous of Southern Louisiana to a town in South Texas, his readers will find much that is familiar: an astonishingly vivid evocation of a setting, a keen insight into the nuances of class, and a complete understanding of the lives of Southern blue-collar men.

And there is always present the suggestion of evil, the possibility that under the right circumstances, nearly everyone is capable of doing just about anything. A brooding ominousness suffuses Cimarron Rose.

As Robicheaux, a deputy sheriff in New Iberia County, La., was the moral compass in that series, so is Billy Bob Holland the uncertain light in the brazenly corrupt town of Deaf Smith, Texas. He's a former Houston cop turned DEA agent, who on one horrible night accidentally shot down his beloved partner, L.Q. Navarro - and now receives frequent visits from the ghost of his friend. Now Holland is a defense attorney in Deaf Smith, a place where a family name and money can mean a great deal and where order is kept by a brutal justice system. Burke writes:

``The jailer was named Harley Sweet and his mouth always hung partly open while you spoke, as though he were patiently trying to understand your train of thought. But he was not an understanding man. When he was a deputy sheriff, many black and Mexican men in his custody never reached the jail. Nor thereafter did they stay on the same sidewalk as he when they saw him coming in their direction.''

As the book opens, Holland is called upon to defend Lucas Smothers, the 19-year-old son of Vernon Smothers, a tenant farmer on Holland's land. Lucas, it seems, is accused of beating and raping a local woman at Shorty's, a local dive, and when she dies, the charge is changed to murder. As with everything else in Deaf Smith, things are more complicated than they seem, for Lucas' real father is Holland, who had had a brief relationship with Lucas' mother some years before.

Holland can't believe Lucas would commit such a crime; he's a sweet-natured young man who would rather play guitar in country bands than just about anything else. Holland suspects that some East Enders - well-to-do young men and women with too much time and money on their hands - who were at Shorty's know a whole lot more about the woman's death than they let on.

In particular, Holland focuses on Darl Vanzandt, whose father Jack is a former war hero and prominent businessman in Deaf Smith. Burke captures the indolence of the young East Enders perfectly: ``They had flunked out of the University of Texas or they commuted to a community college or they held token jobs in the businesses they would inherit. . . . Their accents were regional, but they had skied in Colorado and surfed in California, and they played golf and tennis at a country club where blacks and Mexicans picked up their litter from the greens and sweaty towels from the court, as though that was the natural function of the poor. Their insensitivity was almost a form of innocence.''

These class divisions are at the heart of Cimarron Rose, and they come to the fore when Lucas is put on trial for the murder. But it is there, late in the book, that Burke falters. As well as he understands criminals and those who purport to protect society from them, his trial scenes are unconvincing, particularly the denouement, which is disappointingly predictable.

Given that Burke is obviously more comfortable writing about criminal life than he is the courtroom, and that Holland is a defense attorney, it will be interesting to see how this series develops.

Still, Cimarron Rose is an auspicious beginning, Burke gets the setting down perfectly, and his writing remains vivid and incisive. And whether it's Louisiana or Texas, Burke understands the heart of darkness that is in us all. MEMO: Tim Warren, former book review editor for The Baltimore Sun, is a

writer who lives in Silver Spring, Md. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

James Lee Burke

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu