Review: THE JEALOUS KIND by James Lee Burke

I reviewed The Jealous Kind (Simon & Schuster) by James Lee Burke for Lone Star Literary Life! This is Burke's second novel in the Holland Family series, a coming-of-age tale set in Houston and Galveston in 1952. The Jealous Kind is uniquely Burke and highly recommended. From the review:

It�s 1952 on Galveston Beach and seventeen-year-old Aaron Holland Broussard hits a drive-in for a burger after a day in the salt. Feeling lucky after swimming through a school of jellyfish without being stung, Aaron intervenes in an argument between the beautiful, brilliant Valerie Epstein and her mob-connected boyfriend Grady Harrelson (who �always struck a pose that seemed to capture our times�petulant, self-indulgent, glamorous in a casual way, and dangerous, with no self-knowledge�). 

Before it�s all over, this innocent intervention exposes a vast right-wing conspiracy of garden-variety hoodlums, the Galveston branch of Murder, Incorporated, stone-cold hitters straight from Sicily, corrupt cops, former spooks, and Ayn Rand�reading would-be brownshirts of River Oaks.

Aaron�s mother is bipolar, reminding him of �a crystal glass teetering on the edge of the drain board,� and his father is an alcoholic who belongs to �that generation of Southerners drawn to self-destruction and impoverishment as though neurosis and penury represented virtue.� Consequently, when the bad guys come for him, Aaron must depend upon Valerie, and his best friend Saber Bledsoe, �the trickster from classical folklore.�

Click here to read the entire review. Thank you!