I wrote this short story after the death of my best and oldest friend. The story is based on our experience growing up during the depression era and the war years. It is intended to show a vision of America that is dramatically different, in my opinion, from the one that in some ways defines us today.

Customer Rating:
Summary: My first download, but not my last
Comment: True JLB fiction. Of course I would love the label on a bar of soap if he wrote it. The man can take you inside a story...you smell the dust, you feel the wind and this one ended on a very satisfying note. I wondered how he would tie it up and he did it just right as he always does. The man paints pictures with words and can make you feel a time you never lived and be in a place or situation you never knew.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good story, available elsewhere.
Comment: This is a good story but the Amazon claim that it is not available anywhere else is wrong now that it has been reprinted in Burke's collection of stories, "Jesus Out to Sea."

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A James Lee Burke fan
Comment: I admit it. I needed a Burke fix and when this story was available at Amazon I grabbed it. The writing is James Lee Burke all the way. Now, if he would just write a few more and post them at Amazon.com.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Any story by J.L.B. is worth reading......
Comment: I paid less than fifty cents for ten or fifteen minutes of reading pleasure.
Well worth it.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Prime Package of Multi-Colored Evil. No Pretty Bow-Tie Finish (but come does -uppance.)
Comment: Excellent mood setting in the opening paragraphs proved a no-effort in to the story, >>... houses were wood frame and peeling, the yards bare, the early sun like a dust-veiled egg yolk. <<

THE MOLESTER is very obviously a story authored by a veteran wordsmith, a long-written, seasoned novelist who's also a master storyteller at any length of exposition. The setting descriptions, character drawings, and plot maneuvering were accomplished through polished, professional prose, yet they exposed the author's (and narrator's) underlying spirit of compassion and redemption, which were necessary to allow me to assimilate some of the bitter-edged, dark realities of the story, blended into what at first appeared to be an enhancement of prejudice.

As the story enfolded the reader, then ended, James Lee Burke's vision of the root of evil became clear. He dredged deeply, beneath surfaces of skin, times, and traditions, to get at the heart-of-perversion of harmful intent. Visceral awareness in characters and plot carried the reader quickly through a labyrinth of deep responses and early evaluations, to a chilling conclusion of extraction of evil, yet questions remained for continued consideration.

Here are a few samples of the excellence of this professional pen, which need no adornment:

>> That summer was marked by both drought and sudden electrical storms over the Gulf, an unexpected infusion of cold air into the park during a ball game, a burst of rain-flecked wind gusting plumes of dust high in the air. It was also the summer that we heard the Russians had developed the atom bomb. While the night sky pulsed with lightning that made no sound, World War Two vets, wearing Hawaiian shirts, drank iced-down bottles of Jax and Pearl beer in the stands, and talked about nuclear war. They talked about cities that would be melted into green glass. I wanted to stop my ears. <<

>> The sun was white in the sky, the air like a moist cotton glove on the skin, the street blown with dust. The grass in our yard was yellow and there wasn't a teaspoon of shade in it. <<

>> The room stunk of cigars, shower mold, hair oil, and sweaty workout clothes. A blackboard on one wall gave odds on the fighters, and a bone-white man in a fedora, strap undershirt, and tightly belted zoot slacks was taking bets at a plank bar. His arms and shoulders were streaked with body hair, his mouth formed meditatively into a cone when he wrote a wager on a note pad and tore a slip off for the bettor. <<

This is a pinnacle example of word-smithing art, and of a seasoned author's ability to crisply capture a surface reality, then root into its vision and meaning, without tying a neat bow around the finished package, a bow of his personal, life-machination-prejudices (which are owned by each human being at some level).

Sharp-edged words draw photographic scenes of the other side of Norman Rockwell.

For a yummy contrast to Burke's exquisite syntax and style, here's a new release Amazon Short which works on the bright side of Rockwell:

Coal & Coca-cola

Linda Shelnutt

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