Michael Ondaatje is a poet and even his prose [in The Collected Works of Billy the Kid] moves with rhythmic, circular precision. "Find the beginning," he writes, "the slight silver key to unlock it, to dig it out. Here then is a maze to begin, be in." And from that promising starting point he pries Billy the Kid loose from his legend and takes us inside, to his inner being; we feel as Billy feels….

[It] is through Billy's (or Mr. Ondaatje's) special sensitivity to light and color, movement and sound, that the deserts of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico begin to breathe hotly in our imaginations. The slow, sensuous unravelling of these violent lives is filtered through the monochromatic desert light….

This is a good little book, carefully crafted and thoroughly literate. But it is a "little" book, a portrait in miniature, and eventually limited by Billy's...