Alaska Employment Law

James Lee Burke, age 73, is perhaps best known for a series of successful novels featuring Dave Robicheaux, a likeably complicated but ethically challenged Vietnam veteran who is also a recovering alcoholic and New Orleans policeman.  The Robicheaux novels are swampy and atmospheric, though they sort of blur together in my head.  Robicheaux is not a stickler for rules, and he usually gets the bad guy.

Rain Gods, just out this year, features a different hero with the unlikely (can we all agree on preposterous?) name Hackberry Holland, an older man, sheriff of a small Texas town on the Mexican border that is to dry what New Orleans is to waterlogged.  Let’s say it’s pretty dusty.  Holland is charged with investigating the discovery of nine illegal aliens, all of them young Asian women, who have been murdered by machine gun and buried by bulldozer in a shallow grave near a churchyard. 

Rain Gods is not only more complex than any of the Robicheaux books I have read, it’s also more populated with flesh and blood characters, including the good guys Pam Tibbs, Hackberry’s deputy, who continually struggles with her feelings for Holland; Pete Flores, a frequently drunk Iraq war veteran involved in the killings, though not entirely aware of his involvement; and Flores’ long suffering girlfriend, Vicki Gaddis, an aspiring country singer with a very stiff backbone.  The bad guys are interesting too:  Hugo Cistranos, the career criminal and wannabe mobster who hired Pete; Nick Dolan, a fat, unappealing strip club operator who finally redeems himself because he loves his family more than he loves money; and the truly twisted Preacher Jack Collins (he’s not really a cleric), who brings his deliciously perverse morality to this story.  Space does not allow me to tell you about the creatures from the FBI and the INS who also pursue the killers, not always in league with Hackberry.

I enjoyed Rain Gods more than any of the other books by Burke that I have read.  It should not be confused with great literature, but it’s a damn good story that left me wanting more Hackberry Holland.