Creole Belle

Creole Belle. James Lee Burk. 2012. Burke’s writing just gets better and better. Dave Robicheaux and his buddy Clete run into the usual bunch of worthless scum as they try to find out what happened to Tee Jolie a young woman who is missing. The hunt intensifies when Tee Jolie’s sister is found floating in a block of ice in the river. Robicheaux and Clete have inner demons to fight related to events that happened in Vietnam and when they were policemen in New Orleans. Robicheaux’s musing on man’s depravity and on moral choices that have to be made are icing on the cake for me. Violent, suspenseful and beautifully written, this book makes me want to go back and read the older novels in this series. ( )

Beauty and brutality. The atmosphere that you can cut with a knife. The introspection. The wisdom and the outrage.
Thank you, Mr. Burke. ( )

I can't believe that this Dave Robicheaux series still has such a hold on me. How can I possibly continue to be so enthralled when this is the nineteenth one!? I know that a big piece of that is that I am from the southern United States, although I have lived in California for the last 53 or so years. My extended family remains in the south and I certainly have strong feelings of nostalgia. Burke's writing puts you right there in the scene. You can feel the humidity, see the lush, lush vegetation, and experience the sounds and smells of New Orleans and the surrounding small towns. Dave himself is one of those men who plays both the role of the tough guy and the gentle, highly principled man who many women find so appealing. OK, that I find appealing. His personal struggles are a large part of what appeal to me in this series of novels. I keep wondering if I won't begin to find the books somewhat repetitive as many of the themes are in every book, e.g. his struggle with alcohol and PTSD from his experiences in Vietnam. But then, those ARE often life long struggles in real life. I'm hearing a lot lately about elderly men e.g. in the assisted living facility where my mom lives, whose PTSD gets worse in their old age and some seem to regress. Breaks my heart to see what we do to our women and men by sending them to war. Next to the tv series Rescue Me, about firefighters who experienced 9/11 and their recovery difficulties, Burke draws perhaps the most realistic picture of the experience of PTSD, certainly one of the best I have read. Yes this is a mystery, murder novel, but there is a lot to learn about the history of Louisiana and about war, even tho the novel is set in the present. I think this is Burke's best yet and give it five stars.

P.S. If you are interested in the topic of PTSD I also highly recommend [[Doug Peacock's]] book [Walking It Off: a Veteran's Chronicle of War and Wilderness]. It's a story of one man's method of using walking in wilderness to deal with his PTSD. Great story and wonderful time spent in the wild with bears! Peacock is a friend of Ed Abbey, for fans of Abbey. ( )

Creole Belle is very much Clete's story, a first for James Lee Burke. I saw it coming in previous stories, and Creole Belle was everything I could have hoped for. Full of contradiction and desperate choices. Nothing in the world of Dave Robicheaux is black and white. They live in a world of gray.

Dave contemplates death much more these days. He and Clete think about death, their age, wondering if they're irrelevant, and recall the New Orleans of their youth with a sense of loss akin to mourning. The troubles and pains of their pasts do not taint their memories of New Orleans, and the city of their childhoods remains like a laughing infant, joyous and thrilled with its own being.

The chemical traces remaining from the oil well blowout are like a stain reminding them of what they've lost. Dave mourns the loss of the wetlands, marshes, and bayou of his youth, and resents that the loss comes at a deliberate hand.

The story is as involved as ever, building layers over the characters, bringing some to the end their lives led them to. I did have a few moments of terror when I thought Mr. Burke had taken from us one character whose loss I could not abide.

If I have any complaint, it's that I missed Will Patton's voice. I read this book, though I usually listen to the audiobook. Patton has become the voice of Dave Robicheaux for me.

A few favorite quotes:
"No matter how it played out, my vote would always remain with those who'd had their souls shot out of a cannon and who no longer paid much heed to the judgment of the world."
-- Dave Robicheaux in one sentence.

"Does it make sense that the same species that created Athenian democracy and the Golden Age of Pericles and the city of Florence also gifted us with the Inquisition and Dresden and the Nanking massacre?"
-- Dave sees contradiction as intrinsic to the human condition, even though he doesn't always understand it.

"Evil men feared and hated Clete Purcel because they knew he was unlike them. They feared him because they knew he put principle ahead of self-interest, and they feared him because he would lay down his life for his best friend. I think Ben Jonson would have liked and understood Clete and would not have been averse to saying that, like his friend William Shakespeare, Clete was not of an age but for all time."
-- a fitting description for the man at the center of this story, and a testament to the admiration and love Dave Robicheaux has for his friend. ( )

Creole Belle by James Lee Burke is my all time favourite Dave Robicheaux book. I honestly have not read one I would not recomend, however Creole Belle exceeded my already high expectations. ( )