Cimarron Rose

Book excerpt: Texas attorney Billy Bob Holland must confront the past in order to save his illegitimate son from a murder conviction in this brilliant, fast-paced thriller from beloved New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke. Lucas Smothers, nineteen and from the wrong end of town, has been arrested for the rape and murder of a local girl. His lawyer, former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland, is convinced of Lucas’s innocence—but proving it means unearthing the truth from the seething mass of deceit and corruption that spreads like wildfire in a gossipy small town where everybody knows everybody else’s business. Billy Bob’s relationship with Lucas’s family is not an easy one. Years back he was a close friend of Mrs. Smothers—too close, according to her husband. But when Lucas overhears gruesome tales of serial murder from a neighboring cell in the local lock-up, he himself looks like a candidate for an untimely death, and Billy Bob incurs enemies far more dangerous than any he faced as a Ranger. With the same electric language and hard-edged style that brought James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels to the forefront of American crime fiction, Cimarron Rose explodes with a harsh, evocative setting and unforgettable characters.