Cimarron Rose

This is the first book in James Lee Burke's Billy Bob Holland series.

From the back of the book:

Texas attorney Billy Bob Holland has many secrets in his dark past. Among them is his illegitimate son, Lucas Smothers. When Lucas is arrested for murdering his girlfriend, Holland knows that he has no choice but to try to save the boy, regardless of what it may mean to his own - or the boy's reputation.

The boy is a country musician, abused by his stepfather and haunted by the possibility that he did, indeed, commit the murder in a drunken black-out. But Billy Bob knows the propensity of the small Texas town to make scapegoats of the innocent, and to exploit and sexually abuse those who are without power.

The dead woman was with Lucas the night she died. Everyone knows that. But they were also with the East Enders -- the kids from the good homes with the rich daddies, whose morals are as loose as their pocketbooks. Lucas doesn't want Billy Bob to drag the dead girl's name through the mud, but Billy Bob knows that he'll need to do much worse if he is to save his son's life.

Cimarron Rose won the Edgar Award for best novel in 1998, but it's not been that great a read for me. It has too much cruel violence for my taste and the core plot element of so much drug use is not a subject I enjoy reading about.

I'll pass this one along to a friend to see if she might like it, and I'll skip the rest in the series.