Rating: 
Summary: A Great Story
Review: Another outstanding contribution from one of America's greatest storytellers. A true "fable" of a boyhood rivalry turned life-long epic battle between a cop and an outlaw. Blake creates a rousing tale of a family of moonshine outlaws, where the everglades are their sanctuary and everyone elses hell. First read Elmore Leonard's "The Moonshine Wars," then listen to Steve Earle's fantastic "Copperhead Road" (and then listen to it about 20 times more)and you'll only start to get the feel for Blake's tale of guns, moonshine, bank robbing and revenge in the heat of South Florida.Blake continues to make me anxious for his next book. A great read.
Rating:
Summary: High Times in the Devil's Garden
Review: Big in scope, description and cast of likeable outlaws set in a bygone time and wickedly beautiful Everglades. For me he rounds out a trio of super writers whose work hinges on the desperate, dark and graceful: Blake, Larry Brown and Cormac McCarthy. High company, in my humble opinion.
Rating:
Summary: rip-roaring "Bonnie & Clyde" fun
Review: I loved this story...set in the swampy Florida Everglades and complete with bootleggers, blood fueds, old-fashioned bank robbers and steamy smoldering excitement. It's the story of two sworn enemies - one a lawman...the other an outlaw - carrying a personal vengeance through the years - making each a notorious figure in their own right during a notorious era. I found myself cheering for both sides and didn't want the story to end!
Rating: 
Summary: More Rogue Blood
Review: James Carlos Blake's previous novel, In the Rogue Blood (1997) won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. His new elegy to the past, Red Grass River: A Legend, moves forward in time and geographically eastward to a place called the Devil's Garden."If the Devil ever raised a garden the Everglades was it." In Red Grass River, Blake lays stake to the literary high-ground of south Florida during the raucous years between 1911 and 1924. His fourth novel chronicles a gangland-style family feud between the Ashley's and the Baker's that peaks during the most lawless days of Prohibition. It is the glassy sawgrass swamps full of gators, tigers, and snakes, and every other abomination of wild beast, that gives Blake a perfect setting for his thunderous prose. Like any good novelist, Blake tells his whole story in the first few pages. He uses a clever device called "The Liars Club", where an oldtimer who knew the Ashley's and still remembers their sorry exploits narrates some of the club's taller tales and gives Red Grass River its context."That's for damn sure the way of it down South. Back when we was pups a bunch of graybeards used to sit around in the town square and tell stories about the War Between the States and the bad old days of Reconstruction and the doings of the Klan and such. Everybody used to call those oldtimers the Liar's Club. And now it's what everybody calls us too..."Blake works his magic as only a master storyteller can do and transforms this reedy down-home vernacular into historical reality that explodes off the page.Bootleggers, bankrobbers, and bloodshed. The Ashley's were hunters, trappers, and moonshiners from Georgia. The Baker's were Palm Beach County lawmen. The two families warred more fiercely than the Hatfields and McCoys and, in the end, the Ashley's were all but exterminated by their nemesis, Sheriff Bobby Baker."Only the godawful desperate or the plain goddamned could ever live out there."The story quickly unfolds when Blake's young hero, John Ashley, kills DeSoto Tiger while delivering a load of his father's whiskey to an Indian Camp. From that point forward, John Ashley is a hunted man, and the Ashley Clan is marked. Bobby Baker and John Ashley were rivals since three years before when John was fifteen and stole the girl nineteen year-old Bobby wanted to marry. Then he stole his wooden leg the first time "daddy's little deputy" tried to arrest him. A few years later, Bobby gets some revenge after a botched bank robbery and shootout and he runs down John Ashley in a swamp. Ashley had been shot in the face. Bobby cruelly thumbs out his eye before hauling him off to jail. Brown eyed John, now with a glass blue one, escapes from a chain gang and the all-out murderous war between the Ashley's and the Baker's escalates until that infamous night at the Sabastian River bridge a decade later. "The Ashley Gang is a historical reality," and Blake leaves no doubt that the profound tragedy of these events did happen. The Ashley boys and the Baker boys fought to the death and killed hundreds of others who got in their way. How it happened is a matter of Blake's remarkable ability to tell a story, and the way he effortlessly makes his characters roar to life until the blood and viscera pour off the page. Red River Grass: A Legend, like the western before it, should be another blue-ribbon prize winner. Blake's reverential tone and elegant style renders historic detail with the same similar precision and beauty and affection for words as Cormac McCarthy. He is almost that good.
Rating:
Summary: Got Florida
Review: This is an excellent example of Blake's ability to spin a yarn mixing fact and probability to take a reader on a fantastic journey of surprise, shock, adventure, history, fact and a bit of fiction to glue it all together. This non-stop thrill ride takes you throughout Florida in the days when it was easy to get lost ten miles from the center of any city. In the centers of any of these cities it was easy to get away with murder or be murdered. Ride the highways, the swamps, the backroads; even the bounding main running rum. Keep your weapon handy, you'll need it.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Up To Blake's High Standard
Review: This is the third of Blake's books that I have read. "The Friends of Pancho Villa" was a truly stunning performance, as I said in my earlier review on Amazon. I then devoured "In the Rogue Blood." I liked in nearly as much as the first book, and that's saying a lot. Unfortunately. "Red Grass River", doesn't meet the very high standard set by the other two. Maybe because the others were so outstanding, I was expecting too much. This isn't a bad novel really. Blake is too fine a writer for that. But it is peopled with a collection of remarkably unlikable characters. As I got further into the story, I realized more and more that I didn't care about any of them. It wasn't only that they were unlikable, so are most of the characters in the great novels by James Ellroy. They were unsympathetic. I felt no tension, I didn't know what their goals were, and I didn't care if they made it or not. Frankly, I had a hard time finding a 'lead' figure in the story, someone to identify with and pull for. This book lacks passion. Oh, sure, it's full of action, adventure, and history, but it reads like a record of events. It has the feel that historical non-fiction sometimes has...a description without the feeling. That's strange from someone who painted "The Friends of Pancho Villa" with the rawest emotion and heart. James Carlos Blake is a fine writer, and I look forward to reading more of his work, but I recommend those who are new to his work start with "Pancho Villa" or "In The Rogue Blood." In my opinion, both are much better than this fairly unsatisfactory work.
Rating:
Summary: Not Up To Blake's High Standard
Review: This is the third of Blake's books that I have read. "The Friends of Pancho Villa" was a truly stunning performance, as I said in my earlier review on Amazon. I then devoured "In the Rogue Blood." I liked in nearly as much as the first book, and that's saying a lot. Unfortunately. "Red Grass River", doesn't meet the very high standard set by the other two. Maybe because the others were so outstanding, I was expecting too much. This isn't a bad novel really. Blake is too fine a writer for that. But it is peopled with a collection of remarkably unlikable characters. As I got further into the story, I realized more and more that I didn't care about any of them. It wasn't only that they were unlikable, so are most of the characters in the great novels by James Ellroy. They were unsympathetic. I felt no tension, I didn't know what their goals were, and I didn't care if they made it or not. Frankly, I had a hard time finding a 'lead' figure in the story, someone to identify with and pull for. This book lacks passion. Oh, sure, it's full of action, adventure, and history, but it reads like a record of events. It has the feel that historical non-fiction sometimes has...a description without the feeling. That's strange from someone who painted "The Friends of Pancho Villa" with the rawest emotion and heart. James Carlos Blake is a fine writer, and I look forward to reading more of his work, but I recommend those who are new to his work start with "Pancho Villa" or "In The Rogue Blood." In my opinion, both are much better than this fairly unsatisfactory work.
Rating:
Summary: It's not "The Pistoleer," but it's great!
Review: This novel is set in the early 20th century, but it has a frontier feel. It's typical Blake, which means that fiction doesn't get any better than this. There are sections called "The Liars Club" that are told in a colloquial style--hilarious! This is a MACHO novel about the Everglades, moonshine, south Florida, prison breaks, revenge, and a great deal more. As always, never a dull page with Blake. An incredible novel that you will love if you like Greg Matthews' and Gary Jennings' kind of brutal reality. A++.
Rating:
Summary: Violent splendor
Review: Wow - If you like gritty historical fiction with a decidedly violent bent, this is for you. I've never written one of these reviews before, but felt compelled to. Blake's imagery is stunning, making the everglades come alive and drawing an astonishing picture of a tight-knit family of moonshiners, bootleggers, bank robbers and killers in early 20th century Florida, near the site where Miami is being carved from the swamp. The period details are great, and they blend seemlessly with the truly outstanding story. One of those rare books where both the plot and the writing are top notch. Can't wait to read Blake's other books.
Rating:
Summary: Violent splendor
Review: Wow - If you like gritty historical fiction with a decidedly violent bent, this is for you. I've never written one of these reviews before, but felt compelled to. Blake's imagery is stunning, making the everglades come alive and drawing an astonishing picture of a tight-knit family of moonshiners, bootleggers, bank robbers and killers in early 20th century Florida, near the site where Miami is being carved from the swamp. The period details are great, and they blend seemlessly with the truly outstanding story. One of those rare books where both the plot and the writing are top notch. Can't wait to read Blake's other books.
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