Product Description <br/> THE COLLECTION NO CRIME FICTION FAN SHOULD BE WITHOUT -- THE ESSENTIAL SHORT STORIES OF JAMES LEE BURKE <br/><br/> "America's best novelist" (<br/>The Denver Post ), two-time Edgar Award winner James Lee Burke is renowned for his lush, suspense-charged portrayals of the Deep South -- the people, the crime, the hope and despair infused in the bayou landscape. This stunning anthology takes us back to where Burke's heart and soul beat -- the steamy, seamy Gulf Coast -- in complex and fascinating tales that crackle with violence and menace, meshing his flair for gripping storytelling with his urbane writing style.<br/> About the Author <br/>James Lee Burke, a rare winner of two Edgar Awards, and named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, is the author of thirty-one previous novels and two collections of short stories, including such<br/>New York Times bestsellers as<br/>The Glass Rainbow, <br/>Swan Peak,<br/>The Tin Roof Blowdown,<br/>Last Car to Elysian Fields, and<br/>Rain Gods. He lives in Missoula, Montana.<br/> Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. <br/><br/><br/>Uncle Sidney and the Mexicans<br/><br/> Billy Haskel and I were picking tomatoes in the same row, dropping them by the handful in the baskets on the mule-drawn wood sled, when the crop duster came in low over the line of trees by the river and began spraying the field next to us. <br/> "The wind's going to drift it right across us," Billy Haskel said. "Turn away from it and hold your breath." <br/> Billy Haskel was white, but he made his living as a picker just like the Mexicans did. The only other white pickers in the field were a couple of high school kids like myself. People said Billy had been in the South Pacific during the war, and that was why he wasn't right in the head and drank all the time. He kept a pint of wine in the bib of his overalls, and when we completed a row he'd kneel down below the level of the tomato bushes as though he were going to take a leak and raise the bottle high enough for two deep swallows. By midafternoon, when the sun was white and scalding, the heat and wine would take him and he would talk in the lyrics from hillbilly songs. <br/> <br/><br/> My woman has gone To the wild side of life Where the wine and whiskey flow, And now my little boy Calls another man Daddy. <br/><br/> But this morning he was still sober and his mind was on the dust. <br/> "The grower tells you it don't hurt you to breathe it. That ain't true. It works in your lungs like little sparks. They make holes in you so the air goes out in your chest and don't come back out your windpipe. You ain't listening to me, are you?" <br/> "Sure I was." <br/> "You got your mind on Juanita over there. I don't blame you. If I hadn't got old I'd be looking at her, too." <br/> I was watching her, sometimes without even knowing it. She was picking ahead of us three rows over, and her brown legs and the fold of her midriff where she had tied back her denim shirt under her breasts were always in the corner of my eye. Her hands and arms were dusty, and when she tried to push the damp hair out of her eyes with the back of her wrist, she left a gray wet streak on her forehead. Sometimes when I was picking even in the row with her I saw her look at her shirtfront to see if it was buttoned all the way. <br/> I wanted to talk with her, to say something natural and casual as I picked along beside her, but when I planned the words they seemed stupid and embarrassing. I knew she wanted me to talk with her, too, because sometimes she spoke to Billy Haskel when he was working between us, but it was as though she were aiming through him at me. If only I could be as relaxed and easy as Billy was, I thought, even though he did talk in disjointed song lyrics. <br/> It was raining hard Saturday morning, and we had to wait two hours on the crew bus before we could go into the field. Billy was in a hungover stupor from Friday night, and he must have slept in his clothes because they smelled of stale beer and I saw talcum powder from the po