James Lee Burke

A bit of a sequel to the previous Hackberry Holland book, Feast Day opens with a man digging up fossilised dinosaur eggs at night int he desert, only to witness a man being tortured to death. Another man goes on the run, hunted by bandits and gangsters and the US government, all making an unholy mess that Hackberry Holland has to clean up. The fugitive takes refuge with a Chinese woman who offers a way-station to illegal immigrants coming over the Mexican border, but ultimately ends up in show more the care of the deadly and insane Preacher Jack Collins, who cut a bloody swathe through the innocent and the guilty alike in Rain Gods with his Thompson sub-machine gun. The body count mounts, evil comes creeping in from all directions, bad men do bad things, other bad men seek redemption or spiritual purification, while the good just try to survive the storm.
Burke's books are instantly identifiable with their meditations on landscape and weather and reflections on the darker labyrinths of human morality. Mortality, too, looms large for his aging heroes as the struggle to understand and impart what, if any, wisdom they might have acquired over the years. Hackberry has lived a long and eventful life, with much to haunt him and much to regret and more than his share of nightmares from his time in Korea. He presides over his country and this novel like a cranky father figure who tries to hide his own demons from those he cares for. Anyway, it's another epic and poetic work of crime and passion and flawed humanity. Brilliant. show less

It took me much too long to get through this one, and I can't say it was really worth the time I spent. Burke's mastery of language is still very evident here, in his exquisite descriptions of landscape, wildlife, weather phenomenon, and all sorts of natural beauty. Unfortunately he is just as skillful at describing what knives, bullets and weighted saps do to the human body, and there is just too much of that kind of thing in Creole Belle. Burke has always used violence to illustrate the show more evil side of human nature; even his protagonists could never be described as peace-loving. But since Hurricane Katrina and more recently the oil rig blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico, Burke has given us less and less of the beauty and more of the ugliness. I assume he is representing what he sees happening to his beloved Louisiana lowlands, but he has lost his feel for story and humanity, although he continues to pay lip service to the latter. There is damned little actual story here---the evildoers are evil indeed, but what they are up to (beyond killing and maiming) is awfully vague. It's something to do with why that oil rig blew up and poisoned the Gulf waters, ruined the oyster beds and crippled the shrimping industry, but Burke never bothers to explain it much beyond that. I'm tired of hearing about what a "good man" Clete Purcel is. You know better than that, Mr. Burke---you can't ask us to believe it just because his best friend says so, you have to show us that it's true. After 19 books, I'm still trying to "get" Purcel. A good man can have bad impulses, but he finds the strength to resist them, at least some of the time. Clete never does. I'm tired of Burke treating his female characters as dispensable, unless it suits him to have Robicheaux rescue them from dire circumstances. I'm tired of finding no one to admire in his books. Maybe I'm getting old and cranky. Maybe I've just read too much. Or maybe Burke should have let Dave and Clete die in that mythic moment at the end of The Glass Rainbow. It's almost impossible to suspend my disbelief any more about just how much brutal insult their aging bodies can take and recover from, let alone the superhuman feats they perform with bullets in their backs. My daughter has suggested that I go back and read one of Burke's earlier novels in the series, one that I particularly enjoyed, to get the bad taste out of my mouth. That may be a good idea. But I'll have to wait a while.
April 2013 show less

Set in the lates ‘90s in southern Louisiana, Clete is the 24th book in the Dave Robicheaux series by James Lee Burke only, in this novel, Cletus Purcell, Dave’s long-time friend, one-time partner in the police, and now private investigator, is narrator and main protagonist. He had left his prized cadillac at a friend’s car wash for detailing but, when he returns several days later, he finds it being torn apart by three goons linked to the cartels. This will lead him and Dave on a chase show more to prevent the unleashing of a new and extremely toxic substance.

James Lee Burke is one of America’s greatest writers whose books never disappoint and Clete is a good example of why. At heart, Burke’s tales are about the battle between good and evil but that doesn’t make them simple. Clete, once sidekick, now main protagonist, has a very distinct voice that adds layers to his character and neither he nor the story let up from first page to last. Combining elements of noir, southern Gothic, spirituality and a touch of the supernatural with beautiful, descriptive prose, and complex characters, this is one atmospheric, gritty, often violent, and always compelling read that examines many of the tough issues of the time but that are still as important, if not more so today, and I loved every nail-biting twist and turn of it.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review show less

The cover of the novel made me smile as I have a Route 66 license plate on the front of my Jeep. Reading this novel was my first introduction to the writing of James Lee Burke and it was an exhilarating experience. I enjoyed the story as it opened a series of the Holland Family Saga but whether it was a stand-alone or 1st novel in a series, the language of the story is what drew me between the novel's covers and I didn't want to ever escape.

To say that James Lee Burke has a "way with words" show more cannot begin to express the atmosphere, the setting, the drama of the story, the essence of each setting, the characters, the plot from an ordinary day to the moments of suspense and conflict to the crescendos of resolution. James Lee Burke writes so that the reader becomes immersed with all of his/her senses, absorbing the visuals, the sounds, the aromas, and the flavors of every description provided. This is truly a gifted writer and I was blissfully encompassing myself in all the pages of this writing.

Here are a few of my favorites:
"For just a moment the world felt blown by cool breezes and was green and young again; I would have sworn the willow branches were strung with leaves that lifted and fell like a woman’s hair, and there was a smell in the air like distant rain and freshly cut watermelon.”

"We swam in the evenings with dolphins in water that was as clear as green Jell-O, the coral reefs waving with gossamer fans, the sand white and stripped with the torpedo-shaped shadows of lemon sharks that swam harmlessly past us."

"The location was the most beautiful stretch of terrain she had ever seen, the topography and seasons out of kilter in a way that convinced her a remarkable change was about to take place in her life. The mountains were purple in the distance, the grass long and yellow in the fields, and the earth the color of rust where it had been plowed, the irrigation ditches brimming with water that looked like coffee-stained milk. On the long slope that led up to a dead volcano were orchards of walnut and avocado trees, and at sunset the Indians built fires in the shadows and roasted ears of corn in the coals like people from an ancient time." show less