Detailed view for the Book: Cimarron Rose

Title:

Cimarron Rose
 

Authors:

Genres:

Legal
Crime & Prison
Contemporary

Series:

Billy Bob Holland
1

Editions:

# Date Publisher Binding Cover
1 1997-05-01 Hyperion  

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Blurb: 
As a former cop and Texas Ranger, you wouldn't expect Billy Bob Holland to be the type to shirk violence. However, he's given up carrying a gun since he accidentally killed his best friend. And he struggles to control an intrinsic violent nature that seems to have been passed on through the generations, beginning with his great-grandfather Sam. As Billy Bob reads Sam's journal, he sees the extent of violence of which he is capable; but he also sees the extent of love that Sam had for a woman known as the Rose of Cimarron.

It's a tough battle for Billy Bob to control his own nature when he's faced with defending his illegitimate son, Lucas Smothers, for the rape and murder of a young woman. While in jail, Lucas is surrounded by the scum of the earth, including Garland T. Moon, a most unappetizing human being who's beat the latest rap on himself. The other young men around town aren't exactly poster boys for morality. A rich man's son, Darl Vanzandt, suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome and spends his time terrorizing others together with a band of amoral teenagers.

On the other hand, there are the good people in Billy Bob's life. He's taken a liking to a female cop, Mary Beth Sweeney, who he suspects may be a federal agent. And he's very involved in the life of a young Mexican boy, Pete, who is like a son to Billy Bob. In the meantime, though, he has to deal with the brutality of Darl, the menace of Moon, and ghosts from the past that won't go away.

In fact, it's one of those ghosts that presented the most problem for me with this book. The "woo woo" element diminished the writing. The apparition of the best friend that he killed, L. Q. Navarro, keeps hanging around. BB and LQ have conversations as though LQ were still living. Other people can walk right through him, at which time the apparition disperses. Puh-leeze!!!

Wonderful descriptions abound: "his skin had the unblemished smoothness of latex stretched over stone"; " his left eye was smaller than the other, like a dime-size blue marble pushed deep into clay". Although the book is well plotted, the characters tend toward stereotypes. But ultimately, Billy Bob's emotional baggage wears the reader out, together with the unrelenting brutality of the various psychopaths that populate the book.
1st image eh