James Lee Burke is old school, and his main characters—Dave Robicheaux and Cletus Purcel are old school detectives. They are hard men and not without their own flaws. Dave is literally wrecked with old school Catholic guilt, memories of Vietnam, and the guilt that comes from alcoholism and his ...
Note: This was an “audio read” I am trying to figure out why I am so late in discovering these marvelous characters and even better writer. While I was seriously in awe of some of his writing, I was equally caught up in the plot and the characters. Gut wrenching, emotional, surprising, lyrical… I...
As good a book as any to see if you like Burke’s style of leisurely, philosophical crime novels. It’s the second in one of his minor series, about an old Korean War vet who is sheriff in a remote Texas county. This one focuses on nine young women massacred and buried in a churchyard as various hi...
I wanted a long read for a long airplane trip... cross the country and back... and Rain Gods provided it. This, I discovered, was the second of three novels featuring now middle aged Sheriff Hack Holland. Burke cuts to the chase in the opening chapter, in which nine young women are massacred, and...
four and one-half stars out of fiveA Few Thoughts on Morals and Dave RobicheauxIn all likelihood I will never read a James Lee Burke book and give it less than three stars and it’s more likely to give it four or five stars. With that said, the vast number of characters in Burke’s books seems to ...
Burke tells a story of the country around Missoula Montana and includes relations with American Indians and corporations that set their own gains above ecological benefit.Johnny American Horse is a war hero. He's an American Indian attempting to stop oil companies from drilling on Indian Land. ...
Wow. I can give this book a short review for someone considering reading it, and I want to go more in depth, because this man has a lot going on.So here's the short version of this Edgar winning novel: the story line holds together w/o pause, slow spot, or error, but it's more than that. The deve...
I'm just amazed at the ability of James Lee Burke to create characters who have such depth as Ivy Paret the ex-con who served his time in Angola (Louisiana) and is trying to begin a new life far away from his home town. All of Burke's guys, his characters, think about right and wrong; about tryi...
"Non dire niente. Sei troppo serio. È tutta una gran commedia, amico. Alla fine della fiera si muore tutti, e si resta morti per molto tempo. È una grande inculata, da qualsiasi parte la si guardi."Quarto volume della serie Dave Robicheaux, si conferma un ottimo libro che fa di James Lee Burke un...
It's easy to see how fans of James Lee Burke do not like this-his first-novel. This is the only work of Burke's that I've read and can't say I'm a big fan of the novel either. The characters are mostly unlikable, there's no plot to speak of, what story there is seems to go nowhere, and the author...
Darum geht’s:In den Atchafalaya-Sümpfen ist ein Jahrzehnte altes Skelett aufgetaucht. Das jedenfalls behauptet der große Filmstar Elrod Sykes. Detective Dave Robicheaux schenkt der Geschichte zunächst keine Beachtung. Denn Sykes, der für seine Trunksucht bekannt ist, nimmt es möglicherweise mit d...
Burke, one of my favorite writers, has an extraordinary gift for the use of similes. He can evoke the atmosphere and scenery that sets him way above other writers in the mystery genre. Despite the brutality, violence and corruption, the story intrigues, and Burke continues to develop the characte...
“Pegasus”, no original “Pegasus Descending”, editado em 2006, é o décimo quinto livro da série protagonizada pelo detective Dave Robicheaux, escrito pelo norte-americano James Lee Burke.O cenário da narrativa de “Pegasus” mantém-se na pequena cidade de New Iberia, no sul do Louisiana, na zona do ...
“blues por new orleans”, no original “The Tin Roof Blowdown”, publicado em 2007 pelo norte-americano James Lee Burke (n. 1936) é o 16º livro com o detective Dave Robicheaux. O furacão Katrina está a devastar a costa do Lousiana…Nova Orleães - depois do furacão KatrinaJames Lee Burke “mistura” adm...
a third of a slow way through this book (not the book's fault), i thought i'd give myself entirely to that most overused of parts of speech, the adjective. i do this because james lee burke is a great user of adjectives, and even when he uses them abundantly he doesn't overuse them at all. but i ...
When Burke writes, I see dead people. And sand sharks, and listing planes and oil-slick bubbles of air. The book opens with a small plane going down near Dave's trawler, and Dave and his wife Annie checking for survivors. Its a vivid scene.This is the second book starring Dave Robicheaux, describ...
"In my mind's eye I saw Ronnie Cross and Esmeralda Ramirez flying down an empty six-lane highway through the countryside, the chromed engine roaring, the green dials on the walnut dashboard indicating levels of control and power that seemed to transcend the laws of mortality itself.I thought of h...
This is the second of Burke's Edgar winning novels, and those two awards were what led an unlikely fan such as myself, an urban woman from the Pacific Northwestern US, to commence reading a series about a cowboy-type cop in Texas.My setting and Burke's are very different, as are our tastes in foo...
Book ReviewBurning Angel, for me, didn't quite meet up to expectations in terms of story line. The ending does not address certain questions raised in the mind of the reader as the story progresses. In this, the 8th in the series, I also felt like the thing that I love about these Robicheaux bo...
Ok, I confess that I missed these guys, Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcell. In fact I noticed a smile came to my face when Clete was first mentioned. But like others have said, and I agree, the characters are numerous and from time to time, when they're not mentioned again for 100 pages, I'm like...
James Lee Burke is an excellent storyteller. He creates a tale full of atmosphere and mystery, and if plot details occasionally seem questionable, well, they remain engaging.Book five in the Dave Robicheaux series hits all Burke’s high points:An immersive, sense-filled setting:“I… walked into th...
If this book was a truck, it would be a heavy duty Ford able to pull a submarine out of the water. As number seven in the Dave Robicheaux series, this book, I believe, was the best one yet and that’s saying a lot since I’ve given them all four or five stars. (I don’t give out five stars easily....
Hackberry Holland, cousin of beloved James Lee Burke hero Billy Bob Holland, made his debut in this novel, Lay Down My Sword and Shield, which was originally published in 1971, and it's now been re-released in trade paperback. Fans can learn about Hack’s colorful history, forged against the backd...
In the fourteenth Dave Robicheaux novel, a face from the past that has haunted Dave since he was 20 re-emerges. Dave and his brother Jimmie had long since thought Ida Durbin was dead. But when some odd events start occurring, Ida's death becomes more and more suspect, and all signs lead back to t...
This was a pretty good book. I suppose in giving it four stars, I am unfairly comparing Burke to himself rather than to other writers, at least to a degree.Here's the issue: most writers who keep a series going have trouble adding another and keeping it distinct; the only two situations where I'v...
The weather turned wet and blustery, the temperature dipping below freezing at night, and the wounds in his side festered. From his bedroom window on the second story of his home he saw his fruit trees wither, his fields lie fallow, and many of the slave cabins remain empty. In order to sleep he ...
Clubs were meant to be private in nature. Like families. There was no law that said you had to let people of different religions and races marry into your family, was there? He had heard about a Jewish pledge who had been blackballed—a kid who later dropped out of college and got blinded in Iraq,...
The miracle drug I was given was called streptomycin. I took other forms of medication, too, but I do not remember their names. In the drowsy warmth of the breeze on an August afternoon, I would sleep the sleep of the dead, with no desire to wake up.I had no dreams of the war, as though it had be...
Everyone else was still asleep. I picked up the receiver and went out on the balcony and closed the door behind me. In the east, the light behind the mountains was cold and weak, hardly more than a flicker touching the bottom of the clouds. Gretchen’s hot rod was parked by the creek bed, the top ...
the next morning so there would be no mistake about my status with the department: I was suspended without pay. Indefinitely. It was 7 A.M. and already hot and muggy when Rosie Gomez and I pulled up in front of Red's Bar in her automobile. The white Buick was still parked across the street. ...
But where was I to start? For openers, we sent out her photo to every newspaper and television channel in the state. I also called up a local printer and had circulars made that contained her picture and the words underneath: have YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? CALL THE IBERIA PARISH SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT. A...
Bernard parish courthouses for commercial property deeds with Whiplash Larry Wineburger’s name on them. I discovered that he was a slumlord of large proportions; but if he owned a warehouse in one of those three parishes, it was deeded under another name.I went to an AA meeting that evening and l...
The dirt road along the bayou was yellow and hard-packed and the dust from the retreating column drifted into his face. He wore no socks and the leather in his shoes had hardened and split and rubbed blisters across his toes and on his heels. He watched the retreating column disappear around a be...
Her expression hadn’t been one of shock or pity, as Preacher would have expected; it had been one of triumph. No, that wasn’t it, either. What he had seen in her face was loathing and disgust. She had fried his eyes with wasp spray, taken his weapon, shot him at close quarters, crushed his cell p...
Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. &nbs...
He wore a blue cotton short-sleeve shirt and a Panama hat with a flowered band around the crown. His physique was massive, without a teaspoon of fat on it, his neck like a tree stump with thick roots at the base that wedged into his wide shoulders. His neatly creased slacks hung loosely on his ta...
The cars cut their lights before they got to Lucas's house, but through his open window he could hear music on a radio and the voices of girls. The cars, five of them, were stopped in the center of the road, their engines throbbing softly against the pavement, their hand-rubbed body surfaces glow...
I suspected it was a terrible humiliation. The Jolly Jack carts were pedal-powered and usually driven by teenagers who had dropped out of school. Each morning Mr. Bledsoe reported to a warehouse next to a horse pasture and, alongside the kids, packed his cart with dry ice wrapped in newspaper and...
“There's dried blood on the back floor.” “How do you know?” “Clete and I were inside it … Clete salted the shaft but the Lafayette cops didn't find what they were supposed to.” “I don't believe what you're telling me.” ...
The Jocko Valley was still in shadow, the crest of the hills black-green against the light growing in the sky, the sound of the river loud on the rocks at the foot of the property. She and Johnny had slept with the windows open and the room was cold, and she wished he would come back to bed. In t...
He lay on his side in the bed, in his underwear, watching the pinyon trees and ponderosa and outcroppings of rock and the steep slope of the mountain slide past the window, the woman’s body molded against his, her breath on his neck, her hand resting on his hip. It was funny how he sometimes thou...
Pete was over six feet and walked like he was made from coat hanger wire, but he had a fast ball that came down the chute like a B.B. and LSU and the University of Texas had both offered him athletic scholarships. Seven days a week, at 5:00 A.M." Pete and his widowed mother delivered the Baton Ro...
He had inherited the office after his predecessor fell off a barn roof and broke his neck. Joe Bim rolled his own cigarettes when no one was looking and wore his trousers stuffed inside Mexican cowboy boots, the kind stenciled up the sides with red and green flower petals. He had been at Heartbre...
Charles and Carrollton. It was a fine morning, smelling of the wet sidewalks and the breeze off the river. The fronds of the palm trees on the neutral ground were pale green and lifting in the wind against a ceramic-blue sky; the streetcar was loading with passengers by the levee, the conductor's...
On July 4 we stopped at a small town in western Kansas that Norman Rockwell could have painted. The streets were brick, lined with Chinese elm trees, and the limestone courthouse on the square rose out of the hardware and feed and farm equipment stores like a medieval castle against a hard blue p...
