JAMES LEE BURKE turns his back on the swamps and bayous of Louisiana and heads to the lush valleys and rivers of western Montana for his latest dip into the world of degenerates, drop-outs and deviants.

Ex-Texas Ranger, now lawyer, Billy Bob Holland (star of the award-winning Cimarron Rose and Heartwood) arrives in the Bitterroot Valley, in Montana, to see his friend, Vietnam veteran Doc Voss, who is waging a war against gold miners who are polluting the rivers with cyanide.

Within days of his arrival, Voss's teenage daughter Maisey is gang raped by group of bikers led by Lamar Ellison, who is arrested, but walks free after his DNA samples are lost.

Ellison is then burned alive and the two other perpetrators killed. Voss, who is the prime suspect, is arrested and asks Billy Bob to represent him.

If that weren't not enough, a psychopathic ex-con by the name of Wyatt Dixon (who is a bit like Robert de Niro's character in the film Cape Fear) has tracked Billy Bob to Montana, and teamed up with a bunch of white supremacists. He holds the lawyer responsible for the death of his sister.

Billy Bob, who is haunted by the ghost of his dead friend LQ Navarro, who he accidentally killed, also must deal with a local mobster, government agents and a sheriff who wants him out of town.

Bitterroot is a multi-layered and complex thriller by one of America's, if not the world's, greatest living crime writers.