The Barnes & Noble ReviewTwo years ago, James Lee Burke published , an unexpected departure from his popular Dave Robicheaux series — to my mind, the best long-running series of suspense novels in recent American fiction. The change, expected or not, was obviously beneficial: Cimarron Rose became a national bestseller and went on to win the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award as Best Novel of 1997. In Cimarron Rose — and in its newly published sequel, Heartwood— Burke has shifted his focus from the bayou country of Louisiana to the fictional small town of Deaf Smith, Texas, and has replaced Dave Robicheaux with the equally angst-ridden Billy Bob Holland, a defense attorney and former Texas Ranger who carries with him a host of personal demons, a large measure of unresolved guilt, and an extreme, barely repressed capacity for violence. As anyone familiar with the Robichaux series will realize, these are the classic characteristics of a James Lee Burke hero. Heartwood also invokes a classic James Lee Burke theme: the poisoning of the American heartland by the forces of ignorance, brutality, expediency, and greed. In Heartland, these forces are embodied by Earl Deitrich, the richest and most desperate man in Deaf Smith. Deitrich — who is married to the first great love of Billy Bob Holland's life, the beautiful and unattainable Peggy Jean Murphy — has managed to squander, leverage, or gamble away the lion's share of a family fortune that an earlier generation of Deitrichs acquired by trafficking in the diamond mines oftheBelgian Congo and by enslaving and exploiting the Congo's native population. Earl Deitrich, in conjunction with a local Mexican-American youth gang called the Purple Hearts, has resorted to a sleazy series of scams in order to maintain his accustomed cash flow: enticing friends and