A bit of a sequel to the previous Hackberry Holland book, Feast Day opens with a man digging up fossilised dinosaur eggs at night int he desert, only to witness a man being tortured to death. Another man goes on the run, hunted by bandits and gangsters and the US government, all making an unholy mess that Hackberry Holland has to clean up. The fugitive takes refuge with a Chinese woman who offers a way-station to illegal immigrants coming over the Mexican border, but ultimately ends up in the care of the deadly and insane Preacher Jack Collins, who cut a bloody swathe through the innocent and the guilty alike in Rain Gods with his Thompson sub-machine gun. The body count mounts, evil comes creeping in from all directions, bad men do bad things, other bad men seek redemption or spiritual purification, while the good just try to survive the storm.
Burke's books are instantly identifiable with their meditations on landscape and weather and reflections on the darker labyrinths of human morality. Mortality, too, looms large for his aging heroes as the struggle to understand and impart what, if any, wisdom they might have acquired over the years. Hackberry has lived a long and eventful life, with much to haunt him and much to regret and more than his share of nightmares from his time in Korea. He presides over his country and this novel like a cranky father figure who tries to hide his own demons from those he cares for. Anyway, it's another epic and poetic work of crime and passion and flawed humanity. Brilliant.