Bitterroot

James Lee Burke divides his time between New Iberia, La., and Missoula, Mont. He's explored bayou country in his best selling mystery series featuring New Orleans ex-cop Dave Robicheaux (one of those books, ''Heaven's Prisoners,'' was made into the muddled 1996 Alec Baldwin film of the same name). With his new novel, Bitterroot, Burke sets foot on his other stomping ground, Big Sky country.

Billy Bob Holland, the Texas attorney from Burke's ''Cimarron Rose'' (1997) and ''Heartwood'' (1999), travels to western Montana's Bitterroot Valley at the invitation of his friend Tobin ''Doc'' Voss. After Doc is charged with murdering the men who gang raped his 16 year old daughter, Maisey, Billy Bob comes to his defense.

Burke brilliantly contrasts the region's natural beauty with the ugliness of these violent acts. ''It was a scene from the brush of Norman Rockwell,'' he writes of the valley. ''But inside the hospital, Maisey Voss was plugged into a morphine laced IV, her body strung with purple and yellow bruises that went into the bone.'' Injuries have also been inflicted on the landscape: Doc has been protesting the area's simultaneous environmental and cultural pollution, as cyanide (used to leach gold) has seeped into the local rivers, and white supremacist militias have built armed compounds nearby.

The author aims some of his fiercest barbs at these neo-Nazi thugs. ''They're cowards,'' Billy Bob observes acutely. ''They fear blacks and Jews and locate in places where they'll never have to face them on equal terms.'' When the lawyer discovers the government has allowed the terrorists' illegal activity to continue in hopes that it might expose their connection to the Oklahoma City bombing, ''Bitterroot'' resonates with a chilling timeliness.