I read the first of James Lee Burke’s twenty novels featuring Dave Robicheaux The Neon Rain in July of 1990. I loved it and I have read almost every books since. I actually finished reading the latest book Light of the World back on the 14th of April, but I am just getting around to writing about it now and for most of those 16 days I’ve asked myself why am I avoiding writing about the book. The truth of the matter is that I really don’t know why except that I just thought that there was just something amiss with the book. It certainly wasn’t the descriptive writing that Burke is so well-known for, because that was still there, although this time he was describing Montana and not the Louisiana  bayou. And it wasn’t that Dave and Clete Purcel were not battling some really bad villans because the main one serial killer Asa Surrette was a bad as they come and many of the other characters on both sides of the law were pretty evil, too. So what was it?? I know that at 502 pages this book is the longest of the series, and it took me a long time to get through it. Actually, it took much longer for me to get through the first half of the book than the second. Generally I think that Burke may have tried to force things a little too much, for me it seemed that there were too many bad guys, none on the level of Asa but a couple them, including one police officer came pretty close and the rich folks that Dave and Clete always run up against were no sweethearts either!

The story starts with Dave’s family wife Molly, and daughter Alafair on vacation with Clete in Montana. They are joined in this adventure by Clete’s newly discovered daughter Gretchen Horowitiz a former Mafia hitman turned movie maker who is on a busman’s holiday as she is visiting Montana to work on a documentary concerning the environmental damage wrought by the oil and gas industry. When they first arrive Alafair has an arrow fly past her and the question raised is who tried to kill her, She is convinced that it the shooter was Asa Surrette As Dave and Clete and the gang set out to discover who did fire they arrow/ They meet up with an ex-con and Rodeo rider Wyatt Dixon. Wyatt’s new talent is that he can talk in tongues. Both Dave Wyatt believe that the shooter was Asa Surrette who is out to even the score with Alafair for what she wrote about Asa that got him sentenced to prison. Dave and Wyatt  are also convinced that Asa is well beyond a normal being and is rather the true personification of evil. In addition to this the police are also investigating the murder of the adopted Indian daughter of Caspian Young son of oil baron Love Young(these are the rich people Dave and Clete are bumping heads with), a crime the Police think Wyatt committed. Are you lost yet, see why Burke needed 502 pages… because in addition to these story lines there is also one or two involving Gretchen!! And then Asa uses the name of a Roman Emperor, and the wife, of Caspian, becomes a gladiator ready to sacrifice her life….too much yet? I don’t think I understand all the undercurrents….

Ok so the bottom line did I enjoy the book, yes  Would I recommend it, yes, but I think you should read several of the other books first  Finally, before I wrote this post I read this book review in The Houston Chronicle Review: James Lee Burke faces dilemma in “Light of the World” in the review Mike Snyder writes:

…But Burke has a problem: His signature character, Robicheaux, is about played out.

It’s hard to provide new insights about a guy whose life Burke’s dedicated readers have been following so devotedly since the first book in the series, “The Neon Rain,” was published in 1987. Those who have read all or most of the Robicheaux books — surely a substantial portion of Burke’s readers — might be tempted to skip the pages with the familiar back story. They already know about the death of Robicheaux’s father in an offshore-oil-rig accident. They know about the years when Robicheaux bonded with sidekick Clete Purcel in the jungles of Vietnam and later on the streets of New Orleans, where the two police officers were known as “the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide.” They know about his alcoholism and recovery.

and summarizes …..

Burke’s writing gifts haven’t dimmed, but the character who defines his career has lost his luster. It’s quite a dilemma. Read Full Review

Sadly, I say, I really have to agree with him and maybe that’s the reason I didn’t love the book like the earlier ones. Throughout the book I kinda’ felt that Dave was really a fifth wheel to Clete and Gretchen… and I don’t know if that’s the way I like it!! But I know I will still be waiting for the next installment of the series!!

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I have feeling that if I were an English major or at least more literature literate, I would love the great novels of James Lee Burke even more than I do presently! Creole Belle is the 19th Burke novel featuring Dave Robicheaux and is Book 14 for 2013 this one took a while to read, mainly because it is rather long (528 pages) and I got distracted by a couple of other books, but when I came back and picked it up about midway through, I zipped right through it, especially over the last two hundred or so pages. Like all the other books it’s a whopping good read!!

In his installment, Dave is in the hospital recovering from injuries sustained in the last book (hint: read The Glass Rainbow first!) anyway, a young woman Tee Jolie Melton, visits Dave in the hospital and leaves him an iPod with her songs on it including “My Creole Belle”. When Dave tells people this no one believes him because Tee Jolie disappeared weeks ago. Her sister has also disappeared only her body washes up on shore in a block of ice… with a message that Tee Jolie is still alive. Soon Dave is on a quest to find tee Jolie. Meanwhile Dave’s former partner and best friend Clete Purcell is confronted with problems of his own, some greaseballs are trying to shake him down for a past due debt…. when one of the slime balls is murdered, the hitman is a young woman, who Clete thinks is his daughter from a relationship years ago! Soon Dave and Clete are off their quests. Dave to find Tee Jolie and Clete to find and save his daughter and himself. Along the way they face some of the meanest and most diabolical foes they’ve ever faced and Dave, his family, wife Molly and daughter Alafair are all targets!!

As in all of Burke’s books, the all the characters are superbly developed and in this book the cast is very large! And the images of Louisiana paints with his probe, leave you smelling the bayou and the magnolias and wishing you could be there…. a fellow reader Sue at Goodreads included this passage in her review of Creole Belle and it is a great example of Burke’s writing:

“…The boughs of the cypress trees were as brittle and delicate as gold leaf in the late sun. An alligator gar was swimming along the edge of the lily pads, its needle-
nose head and lacquered spine and dorsal fin parting the surface with a

fluidity that was more serpent than fish.

 

…Then the wind gusted and a long shaft of amber sunlight
seemed to race down the center of the bayou, like a paean
to the close of day and the coming of night and the cooling
of the earth, as though vespers and the acceptance of the
season were a seamless and inseparable part of life that
only the most vain and intransigent among us would deny.”

 

So if you’ve never read James Lee Burke’s books go find The Glass Rainbow and then follow it up with Creole Belle and I’m sure after those two you’ll go back and read Dave Robicheaux’s 17 other adventures! Hell, you have to find out why Clete and Dave fight both their demons, and the bad guys!

As for me I finished just in time for the next installment coming in July, Light of the World

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Book 12 for 2012 Feast Day of Fools is book three in another of Burke’s series featuring Hackberry Holland,  and I must say that this series is just as good,  if not better than the Robicheaux

Looking back through my Goodreads.com bookshelf,  I see that I read my first James Lee Burke book, The Neon Rain and was introduced to the world of Dave Robicheaux in 1990!

Now 22 years and 17 books later, I still can’t wait for the next book Creole Belle which is due out in July! In the meantime, I figured I’d read a book from Burke’s Hackberry Holland  series!

Hackberry Holland first appeared in Burke’s 1971’s Lay Down My Sword and Shield and didn’t appear again until the release of Rain Gods last year! Holland is the sheriff in a small southern Texas border town and in this book he faces some pretty nasty villains!

 The Synopsis from Burke’s website:

When alcoholic ex-boxer Danny Boy Lorca witnesses a man tortured to death in the desert and reports it, Hack’s investigation to the home of Anton Ling, a regal, mysterious Chinese woman whom the locals refer to as La Magdalena and who is known for sheltering illegals. Ling denies having seen the victims or perpetrators, but there is something in her steely demeanor and aristocratic beauty that compels Hackberry to return to her home again and again as the investigation unfolds. Could it be that the Sheriff is so taken in by this creature who reminds him of his deceased wife, that he would ignore the possibility that she is just as dangerous as the men she harbors?

Danny Boy Lorca is only one of the many memorial character in a book that is loaded with them. Others include a Mexican named Krill. and his comparde Negrito, Reverand Cody Daniels,  an evil Russian mobster, but perhaps the most memorial one is Preacher Jack Collins, Holland’s nemesis in Rain Gods. Collins was thought to be dead  at the end of Rain Gods, but he is far from dead and he and his Thompson machine gun rip it up in this book. It seems that the majority of characters including Hack are flawed, and they are haunted by their past, as they battle for the future!  Overall, this is one of the best books that I’ve read in a long time!!

Again from Burke’s website!

 Praised by Joyce Carol Oates for “the luminosity of his writerly voice” James Lee Burke returns with his most allegorical novel to date, illuminating vital issues of our time—immigration, energy, religious freedom—with the rich atmosphere and devastatingly flawed, authentic characters that readers have come to celebrate during the five decades of his brilliant career.

If you’ve never read a James Lee Burke book this is a great place to start and if you do read it,  I know you’ll be back for more!!!

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The Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke

So it’s been almost a month since the last book! A lot has happened including Peter’s wedding, Nick’s accident, Elizabeth’s return to college. And through it all I have been in the world of Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcell in Book The Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke. Hum, it does not usually take me this long to read a Burke novel but there was just something about this book so that I really couldn’t get into it and I don’t know what it was. The characters are still good Dave and Clete and Alafair. The low-lifes and criminals are still there.

About The Glass Rainbow

In this one Dave and Clete are investigating the murder of nine women in the Jefferson Davis Parish including one who doesn’t fit in with the others an honor student and all around good girl. Alafair is dating a man Kermit Abelard who Dave does not approve of and even likes his house guest (and other lover ex-con Robert Weingart even less. Soon both stories intersect along with an investigation of Clete’s!

Final Thoughts

Overall the book moved more quickly over the last 100 ages or so and became a page turner at that point. But like always even though I wasn’t enthralled with the book the writing and sense of place that Burke creates were still there putting him well ahead of the crowd in my opinion and I will look forward to his next book which is a Hackberry Holland book (Rain Gods) I think!

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“. . . I had found the edge. The place where you unstrap all your fastenings to the earth, to what you are what you have been, where you flame out on the edge of the spheres, and the sun and moon become eclipsed and the world below is as dead and remote and without interest as if it were glazed with ice. ”
— James Lee Burke (Black Cherry Blues: A Dave Robicheaux Nove

After writing like that, I quickly went back and read The Neon Rain and Heaven’s Prisoner and in the last twenty years I’ve read all but one of the books. (Note to self – READ Burning Angel). The books are gritty and deal mostly with the underbelly of New Orleans and New Iberia Louisiana and while I’ve never been to New Iberia or New Orleans through  Burke’s words, I feel that I’ve traveled many a back road, driven across levees  and floated down many a Louisiana bayou and along the way I’ve watched as Dave chase his own personal demons, dealt with the murder of his  wife Annie,  friends who took the wrong turn and ended up on the wrong side of the law, the mob,  the CIA and just about every other kind of underbelly cretin you can think of!

Throughout the books,  Clete Purcell has always been by Dave’s his side usually taking things just a tad too far, like the time he poured cement into a mobster’s car.  While Bootsie Dave’s wife, Alafair and her three-legged raccoon Tripod, Batiste and the Bait and Tackle shop have oftentimes provided comfort and a safe haven for Dave.

Yes, the list of memories goes on and on, from conversations with General John B Hood (In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead) in the Louisiana swamps, to the devastation from Hurricane Katrina in the The Tin Roof Blowdown and hopefully Mr Burke will keep creating those memorable characters and scenes for us for many more years. James Lee Burke is a national treasurer that any fan of crime fiction or just good fiction writing should read, and read, and read!!

Main Characterr: Dave Robicheaux, Hackberry Holland
Occupation: Detective
Location: New Iberia, New Orleans, LA

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James Lee Burke Books I’ve read…

Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux, #19)
Feast Day of Fools (Hackberry Holland, #3)
The Glass Rainbow (Dave Robicheaux, #18)
Crusader’s Cross (Dave Robicheaux, #14)
Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland, #2)
Swan Peak (Dave Robicheaux, #17)
The Neon Rain (Dave Robicheaux, #1)
Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux, #3)
A Morning for Flamingos (Dave Robicheaux, #4)
A Stained White Radiance (Dave Robicheaux, #5)
Heaven’s Prisoners (Dave Robicheaux, #2)
In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead (Dave Robicheaux, #6)
Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux, #7)
Cadillac Jukebox (Dave Robicheaux, #9)
Sunset Limited (Dave Robicheaux, #10)
Purple Cane Road (Dave Robicheaux, #11)
Jolie Blon’s Bounce (Dave Robicheaux, #12)
Last Car To Elysian Fields (Dave Robicheaux, #13)
Pegasus Descending (Dave Robicheaux, #15)
The Tin Roof Blowdown (Dave Robicheaux, #16

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