Book review: Wayfaring Stranger

BEST known for his books featuring Dave Robicheaux, James Lee Burke has written a fascinating historical crime novel in Wayfaring Stranger.

Texas sheriff, Hackberry Holland, will be familiar to Burke’s fans, having first appeared in one of his earliest novels, Lay Down My Sword and Shield (1971), and, more recently, in Rain Gods (2009) and Feast of Fools (2011), but the Hackberry Holland we meet here is an older incarnation, a laconic US Marshal who made his reputation when he faced down the infamous outlaw, John Wesley Hardin.