Creole Belle

Dave Robicheaux #19

by James Lee Burke

“America’s best novelist” James Lee Burke returns with another New York Times bestselling entry in the Dave Robicheaux thriller series ( The Denver Post ).

Set against the events of the Gulf Coast oil spill, rife with “the menaces of greed and violence and man-made horror” ( The Christian Science Monitor ), Creole Belle finds Dave Robicheaux languishing in a New Orleans recovery unit since surviving a bayou shoot-out. The detective’s body is healing; it’s his morphine-addled mind that conjures spectral visions of Tee Jolie Melton, a young woman who in reality has gone missing. An iPod with an old blues song left by his bedside turns Robicheaux into a man obsessed…And as oil companies assign blame after an epic disaster threatens the Gulf’s very existence, Robicheaux unearths connections between tragedies both global and personal—and faces down forces that can corrupt and destroy the best of men.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Thriller, Mystery Thriller, Audiobook, Suspense

624 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 17, 2012

About the author

James Lee Burke is an American author best known for his mysteries, particularly the Dave Robicheaux series. He has twice received the Edgar Award for Best Novel, for Black Cherry Blues in 1990 and Cimarron Rose in 1998.

Burke was born in Houston, Texas, but grew up on the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast. He attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the University of Missouri, receiving a BA and MA from the latter. He has worked at a wide variety of jobs over the years, including working in the oil industry, as a reporter, and as a social worker. He was Writer in Residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, succeeding his good friend and posthumous Pulitzer Prize winner John Kennedy Toole, and preceding Ernest Gaines in the position. Shortly before his move to Montana, he taught for several years in the Creative Writing program at Wichita State University in the 1980s.

Burke and his wife, Pearl, split their time between Lolo, Montana, and New Iberia, Louisiana. Their daughter, Alafair Burke, is also a mystery novelist.

The book that has influenced his life the most is the 1929 family tragedy "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 5 out of 5]

”Many years back I gave up all claim to a rational view of the world and even avoided people who believed that the laws of physics and causality have any application when it comes to understanding the mysteries of creation or the fact that light can enter the eye and form an image in the brain and send a poetic tendril down the arm into a clutch of fingers that could write the Shakespearean sonnets.”

Imagine my surprise when I go to pluck the next Dave Robicheaux novel off the shelf and discover it is the 19th installment in the series. I don’t think there is another series, none come to mind, that I’ve read this deep into their creation. I purchase his new books without giving it any thought. I was also shocked to discover that there are now 23 books in the Dave Robicheaux series. Dave and I have been on many adventures together, and this one represents sort of the culmination of all the things I love about the Dave Robicheaux series.

Dave will do anything for his friends and family. Hands down. He will walk through the cannon smoke to save someone he cares about with a grin on his face. He is the best friend a person can have and the worst kind of dogged enemy. His pork pie wearing best friend, Clete Purcel, is cut from the same mold. These guys met, and they know, as different as they look on a DNA level, they are exactly the same where it counts...in the gut. Even when one of them is wrong-headed about something, when the chips are down, they are in the saddle, riding right along with each other.

James Lee Burke always conjures the best criminals. There is never just one arch villain in any of his novels, but a multitude of degenerates, from the south side of town and from the pillared communities on the north side of town. His descriptions of the Louisiana terrain are so lyrical you wonder why you bother to live anywhere else until he provides you with the equally lyrical description of the type of criminal that rides around Louisiana like a king. ”His eyes made me think of dark blue marbles floating in milk, his mouth duck-billed, his nose shiny with moisture, even though the night air was cool and getting colder. I had never seen anyone with such strange coloration or with such a combination of peculiar features, nor had I ever seen anyone whose eyes were so deeply blue and yet devoid of moral light.”

Or how about Dave’s description of his uneasy relationship with a state that chewed up beautiful and intelligent people like a wood chipper. ”That was the irony of falling in love with my home state, the Great Whore of Babylon. You did not rise easily from the caress of her thighs, and when you did, you had to accept the fact that others had used her, too, and poisoned her womb and left a fibrous black tuber growing inside her.”

The women in this book are so sexy they will make a man lose all sense of himself. There are women who are trying to be defined by more than just the curves of their tits and ass. There is a hitwoman who has all kinds of reasons to put down the men who represent the same men who abused her when she was a helpless child. Being willing to pull a trigger turns a hundred and twenty pound woman into a lethal machine. People are trying to do the right thing but find themselves caught in the sinister machinations of people with no guiding morality. There is even a Nazi, and who the hell doesn’t hate Nazis.

I love Burke’s description of rich people. ”If you are around the very rich for very long, you quickly learn that in spite of their money, many of them are dull-witted and boring. Their tastes are often superficial, their interests are vain and self-centered. Most of them do not like movies or read books of substance, and they have little or no curiosity about anything that doesn’t directly affect their lives.” I’ve known too many rich people and wish I could unknow most of them. They think that being rich will fill the hole inside them. They wake up every day striving to be rich, willing to do anything, including robbing, stealing, cheating, and fucking over everybody they needed to if it lets them climb one more rung up the ladder. I’ve been hearing a lot of grumbling from the conservative elements in this country about the “takers” on unemployment, but I never hear them say anything about the much bigger takers...the rich. What little we give those in need is nothing compared to what the rich have taken from all of us. I find it offensive that way too many of them are uncultured as well.

Burke does shootouts better than just about anyone. I found myself gritting my teeth through more than one. I feel like the boys are going to eventually reach a wall they can’t climb, a moat they can’t float over, or odds that can’t be overcome. Well, that day is far in the future at this point with four more books waiting for me. I take solace in knowing that Dave and Clete are still out there fighting the good fight.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten and an Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/jeffreykeeten/

[John Connolly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Occasionally I’ll meet would-be-writers (and, indeed, published writers) who try to avoid reading anything remotely resembling their own work while writing. I suppose they worry that they might be overly influenced by the style of the writer whom they’re reading, and I accept that this can be a real concern, especially when one is starting out. I can still spot the paragraph in Every Dead Thing that was written under the influence of too many Cormac McCarthy novels, mainly because it’s a paragraph long and entirely untroubled by punctuation, apart from the full stop at the end.

On the other hand, there’s a lot to be said for reading a writer of undeniable excellence who is working in the same field as you are. At the very least, it gives you something for which to aim, and will remind you of how good the writing within your genre can be. That’s as true of mystery fiction as any other. There’s a lot of serviceable writing in the genre, but not a lot of really great prose. Some people might argue that you don’t read mystery fiction for the prose, but that’s like saying that you don’t judge your furniture by the quality of its construction. It’s enough that the table is flat, and your cup doesn’t slide off. It’s the same mindset that likes to describe mystery fiction as essentially plot-driven when, as any fule kno, it’s character-driven, or at least the best of it is.

James Lee Burke is one of the writers who made me want to be a writer. He’s one of the great prose stylists in the mystery genre, or indeed any genre, and for my money he’s the greatest living mystery writer. He’s so good that I’m always one book behind. I don’t read his next-to-last book until I have the latest one on the shelf. That way, I’ll always have one in reserve. (When I mention this at book events, it’s nice to see a lot of readers nod in understanding. I may be odd, but I’m not alone in my oddness.)

With that in mind, Creole Belle is actually 2012’s Dave Robicheaux novel, and I still have 2013’s book, Light of the World, to read. Which is nice. It was, as always, an illuminating experience to read it as I began writing the next Parker book, although, slightly worryingly, it did touch on some of the same subject matter as the novel on which I’m working. Still, that happens less often than one might expect, given that all creative endeavor draws from the same cloud of inspiration.

What’s interesting about Creole Belle – the consistency of the quality of Burke’s work apart – is the extent to which its characters are shadowed by mortality. Burke made a decision a long time ago to allow his characters to age, which has kept the books fresh. If, as I said above, all fiction is fundamentally about character, then by allowing the characters to change and develop, a writer can ensure that his or her fiction changes and develops too. I always enjoyed Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels, but because Spenser never really aged, the books never really changed either. They were all basically the same, which was kind of reassuring. Sometimes it’s nice to know what you’re getting before you buy it.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Burke’s characters should have mortality on their minds. Their creator is no longer a young man, and the concerns of his characters probably reflect his own. Nevertheless, I hope Burke has many years left in him yet. For my generation of mystery writers, he remains something of a touchstone, and I personally am lost in admiration for him as both a writer and a decent, moral human being.

[carol. · Rating 2 out of 5]

My auto world conspired against this book, but I confess, I didn't make much of an attempt to wrest control back. First the phone jack started to age and provide me with cheery campfire crackling sounds while I listened. Atmospheric, I suppose, but tended to make the hearing of actual words challenging. Changed out cords. Turned out it was my phone. Oh well; waited a month and got a new phone. Hurrah! Except the new Iphone doesn't seem to work even with the 'dongle.' As an aside, can you believe that's the best they can come up with for the extra bit to make the new iPhone jack work? A dongle? You might as well have called it a 'peter' and been obvious about it. Maybe a hose?

At any rate, during this time my car also decided to have an issue or two and it was indeed getting old, so I went and got a new one. In theory, all pieces should have been on deck for seamless audio books, but frankly, I just don't feel up to any more Burke, whether read by Will Patton or not. Although Clete was both interesting and funny in this book, and I kind of want to know whether or not Joie Bolie is actually alive, the mystery here is slower than molasses in winter. Besides, it feels more like I need to christen my new love with Stephen Fry or Kobna Holdbrook Smith.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Burke's Robicheaux novels are known for their exploration of the nature of man, good vs evil, suffering, penance and forgiveness, big themes relevant to all life. The fact that the novels are set in New Orleans, with all that city's long and storied and messy history, accentuates the stories. The city and the state of Louisiana around it are characters in Burk's series and add to some of his most evocative writing.

In Creole Belle, Dave and Clete have become mixed up in something they don't really understand. The crimes that occur don't follow any discernible pattern. Louisiana is still recovering -- or more rightly trying to recover -- after the huge oil rig blow out which has impacted everyone and destroyed the way of live for so many. Dave has just recovered from a near fatal wounding and is feeling the weight of his years. Clete, always out of control with his drinking and carousing, learns something that adds to his already heavy psychological burden.

The plot is complex and, as is usual for Burke, well developed. The writing is fantastic. (forgive my gushing, but I was stopped so many times during this reading to reread portions for the beauty or aptness of a passage).

p 362 "I went outside and closed the screen door softly
behind me and walked to the cruiser. I thought I heard
her crying....I was glad I was alive and that I owned
my own soul and that I didn't have to drink. To others
these might seem like minor victories, but when you are in
the presence of the genuinely afflicted, you realize that
the smallest gifts can be greater in value than the
conquest of nations."

Standing outside his house (295)

"...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."

My last quote for this review comes out of the experience of the many poor in Louisiana, and those not poor but not wealthy, who see in their midst some fabulous wealth.

"If you are around the very rich for very long, you quickly
learn that in spite of their money, many of them are dull-
witted and boring. Their tastes are often superficial,
their interests vain and self-centered. Most of them do not
like movies or read books of substance, and they have little
or no curiosity about anything that doesn't directly affect
affect their lives....Those who wait on them and polish and
chauffeur their automobiles and tend their lawns and gardens
are abstractions with no last names worth taking note of. The
toil and sweat and suffering of the great masses are the
stuff of a benighted time that belongs in the books of
Charles Dickens and has nothing to do with our own era."

These are examples of both style and content. Burke is concerned for the physical, natural world of Louisiana which is being plundered more and more quickly. He is also concerned for the average person who has less and less control over his life.

I heartily recommend this book and the series. Those books written since Katrina are truly fine.

[Aditya · Rating 3 out of 5]

The series is infamous for its repetitive plots. The books don't merely share outlines, they share situations, character archetypes and major plot details. I still swear by it because of the silky smooth prose. However the well oiled machine has started to groan, this was the first time I thought of dropping the series. To understand why Creole Belle has smothered the series, I need to delve into its background.

The series goes through noticeable arcs, the first few dealt with the lead's alcoholism, then Robicheaux mellowed only to nearly succumb to his vices after he lost a loved one. Since the last one #18, Robicheaux seems to be confronting his own mortality. I loved the new direction and I thought it was one of the best books in the series. Burke almost convinced me the series could lose some of those cast members that matters (not one of Robicheaux's love interests, they drop quicker than flies) so I was fully invested. The trouble is an older Robicheaux ruminating about mortality is the newest theme and it does not really work when I know Burke does not possess the conviction to follow through on the ideas. He uses this crutch to show Robicheaux's brushes with the reaper getting closer and closer. But he also ages his protagonist chronologically, so he has Robicheaux eating more bullets in his 60s than he has since the first few books in the series.

The series has changed in other ways. The villains have gone from mobsters pretending to be middle class businessmen to the one percenters who perpetuate atrocities under the banner of civility. The genre also oscillates. From gritty character focussed noir where the protagonist was just a less darker version, one bad decision away from the people he was up against. To a sort of Western where Robicheaux and his private wrecking ball Clete Purcell are the allegorical spirit of Louisiana that refuses to bow down to institutionalized averice and indifference that wrecks their utopian paradise. Westerns calls for heroes and not antiheroes, that is what Robicheaux feels like now. Individually these changes don't matter but their combined effect is shifting the roots of one of my favorite crime series.

Robicheaux used to be the conventional sole first person narrator when the series started. Slowly Burke opened up the POV, the reader would get an omniscient narrator for a chapter or two. But this feels like Purcell's story, so Robicheaux does not even feel like the lead in his own series. As Robicheaux investigates a powerful Louisiana family in connection with a missing girl, a new hitman is in town and it is Purcell's long lost daughter. And it is an immediate problem. Purcell has been the best sidekick character in crime fiction because he is a one of a kind combination of goofball and psychopath. Now there are two of him running around. The resultant family drama is soap opera ish, there is a reason Williams or O'Neill did not write the greatest plays in human history about a father warning his daughter not to kill random henchmen.

And it is also way too long. Burke was in his mid 70s when he wrote this and he has become a bit long winded. It doesn't feel padding for padding's sake, the passion is still there but it doesn't work. The actual crime narrative completely lacks focus even by Burke's sprawling standards. This review feels negative but do remember I am comparing it to what came before. If this is your first Burke, you might still love it because of the prose. It is excellent, it is way ahead of the genre fiction curve. Every time it talks about aging or choices I find myself nodding in agreement. Click on the Robicheaux tag to see my earlier reviews where I have sung its praises. This time I will just leave with the quotes which will remind you why an average Robicheaux outing will still have its moments. Rating - 3/5

Quotes: Sometimes there are occasions when charity requires that we accept arrogance and rudeness and deception in others.

it’s a fine thing to belong to a private club based on rejection and difference Nonconformism explained.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story picks up right after The Glass Rainbow. Dave Robicheaux is recovering from the shootout at the end of that story. He is on a morphine drip to manage the pain and in the middle of the night is visited by Tee Jolie Melton, a blues singer, whom we met in the previous book in the series. She leaves him with an Ipod filled with music and tells him that she is pregnant and the father is a married man. When he wakes up he is not sure whether it was a dream or real ... perhaps it is just a morphine addled mind. But then he sees the Ipod on the bedside table. Despite the presence of the Ipod no one believes he was visited by Tee Jolie. She disappeared weeks before her nocturnal visit. Against this backdrop there has been a major oil spill in the Gulf that killed 11 people. Sound familiar?

After his release from the hospital Dave is working half days when he is called to the scene of a body that was found. Blue Melton, Tee Jolie's sister, has washed ashore in a block of ice. In the course of his investigation we meet the usual cast of characters ... members of a wealthy family who live on a former plantation, mob figures, and a former Nazi SS guard who is passing himself off as a Southern gentleman. A new character to the series is introduced in this novel. Gretchen Horowitz whom Dave's best friend, Clete Purcell, believes may be his illegitimate daughter. She may also be a contract killer.

The major theme in the Dave Robicheaux books that I have read seems to be good vs evil. It is also about the central character of Dave Robicheaux. He is a complex man. He has many flaws. He is a recovering alcoholic who still has thoughts of drinking, he is a Vietnam veteran who apparently has occasional bouts of PTSD, he was fired from the New Orleans Police Department under a cloud, and lives with ghosts. The ghosts of his mother and father, the ghost of his former wife Annie, the ghosts of Confederate soldiers and soldiers in his platoon when he was in Vietnam. In other books he received phone calls from his dead wife. In this story he receives phone calls from Tee Jolie. Despite all of these problems he is at heart a decent man who cares about people. Sometimes it is his caring that gets him into trouble. He usually believes his fellow man (or woman) is at heart decent and goes to great lengths to help.

I enjoyed this book, as I have all of James Lee Burke's, but there seemed to be too many plots. You have the Gulf oil spill and corporate greed, there is apparent criminal activity involving stolen art and/or forgery, and there is a former Nazi SS guard living in their midst. Not only is he living unsuspected among them but is apparently involved with sexual slavery. On top of this there is the age of Dave and Clete. They must be in their sixties by now. It is a bit of a stretch to believe that they can engage in some of the exploits detailed in the later stories. Clete drinks and eats like a college frat boy and women jump in his bed. Seriously?

The Dave Robicheaux books are fun and enjoyable if you don't take them too seriously. James Lee Burke's writing is evocative and poetic. I love his descriptions of place and scene. I can visualize the sunrises, hear the rain on a tin roof, taste the foods, and listen to the music. What is hard to believe is that Dave and Clete engage in fights, get shot, recover, and come back to fight another day. There is one more book, Light of the World, in the series and I am looking forward to it but hopefully Burke will not stretch the credibility to the point that it detracts from enjoying the story.

[James Thane · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Lee Burke's sixteenth Dave Robicheaux novel, The Tin Roof Blowdown, took place in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Dave's beloved southern Louisiana had been devastated by the storm and the recovery had been badly bungled by inept government officials, some of whom cared very little about the people of the state and their lives that had been so terribly disrupted.

Creole Belle, the nineteenth book in the series takes place in the wake of the BP oil spill, and again, the state is under assault by forces beyond its control. As the book opens, Dave is hospitalized, recovering from a bad gunshot wound he suffered in a shootout a month earlier. While in the hospital and under the influence of morphine, which he's being given to dull the pain, Dave is visited by a beautiful young woman named Tee Jolie Melton. Tee Jolie is pregnant by a married man and spills out her troubles to Dave. She also suggests that she has knowledge about the problems that led to the explosion and spill in the Gulf. But did Dave really see the young woman, or was she only an apparition brought on by the morphine? Tee Jolie, who is a singer, leaves Dave an iPod and includes three of her own songs on the playlist. Dave has the iPod, but only he is able to hear Tee Jolie's three songs.

The problem is compounded by the fact that Tee Jolie disappeared several weeks before she allegedly visited Dave. Her sister is also missing. Dave believes that the two young women are in grave danger and is determined to find them. His search involves him in the lives of a number of rich and malevolent people who have lots of dirty secrets that they do not want revealed in the light of day. Before long, they will see Dave as a threat to their well-being and, as usual, this will not be good news for Dave.

As always, Dave enlists the aid of his long-time friend and alter-ego Clete Purcell. As readers of this series know well, to call Clete a loose cannon does not begin to scratch the surface of the man's character. Like Dave, Clete is a troubled man whose difficulties now stretch back to events that occurred decades ago. In this case, Clete has additional issues and problems of his own that may get in the way of his ability to assist Dave and that may even interfere with their long-time friendship.

After eighteen previous Robicheaux novels, there's little new that one can say about the series and even fewer fresh ways to praise the writing of James Lee Burke who is not only one of America's great crime writers but one of its best writers period. After all this time and after all these books, Burke is still at the top of his game. Sadly, both Dave Robicheax and Clete Purcell are feeling their age and know that their string cannot have much longer to play out. Happily, the same cannot be said for their creator.

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read my Interview with the author James Lee Burke @http://more2read.com/review/interview-with-james-lee-burke/

Darn it! I have been singing 'My Creole Belle!' lyrics since I set my eyes on this one hell of a humdinger tale set before you by James Lee Burke.

The Bobbsey Twins are back and they do not disappoint with an even greater showdown in the bayou teche than featured in the glass rainbow by James lee Burke.

You will hope that they are able to establish some justice in the bayou teche and a form of resolution to the human tragedy that occurs in this story.

David is on the repair from a recent large-scale shoot out on the bayou teche. He's of a fragile state and in this story he starts to reflect deeply on his land and it's history and talks from the heart about many issues he has struggled with through his years upholding justice. These reflections provide the reader with some food for thought and questions on love and war.

Clete Purcell is featured in this story more than previous and has a new dilemma set before him that is going to give him the test of his turbulent life. This excerpt, taken from the Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke, describes him ...

“Clete was the libidinous trickster of folklore, the elephantine buffoon, the bane of the Mob and all misogynists and child molessters, the brain-scror he’d jar head who talked with a dead mamasan on his fire escape, the nemesis of authority figures and anyone who sought power over others, a one-man demolition derby who had driven an earth-grader through the walls of a mobsters palatial home on Lake Pontchartrain and systematically ground the entire building into rubble. Or at least that was the persona he created for the world to see. But in reality Clete Purcel was a tragedy. His enemys were many: gangsters, vindictive cops, and insurance companies who wanted him off the board. Klansmen and neo-Nazis had tried to kill him. A stripper he had befriended dosed him with the clap. He had been shanked, shot, garrotted, and tortured. A United States congressmen tried to have him sent to Angola. But all of the aforementioned were amateurs when it came to hurting Clete Purcel. Clete’s most dangerous adversary lived in his own breast.”

This story shines with some key female characters, one missing another needing discovery. There are women who want lives in film making, singing and acting but find more darker roads and fates in caught in the path of the evil men. There are men of power in this story and war criminals, mobsters and ex-cons. There are also courageous, and loving men fathers who try to rekindle with those lost in their past.

There is redemption, vengeance and love.

Love has a chance against the hate of the past, chance to aid the damaged souls in this story.
There is a great struggle for a father and daughter here, to reunite and protect under circumstances that are far from normal.

A very important ingredient to this story is the entering on the scene of a despondent woman, Gretchen Horowitz, she's caught in the path of wicked and bad men.
Shes a memorable character with plenty of fight, a femme fatale with many good wholesome qualities a byproduct of the evil that men do, a survivor.

David Robicheaux is a character that I will love to go back and learn and read of his first chapter in entering the fiction world in the novel Neon Rain. He seems successful due to certain qualities pus the great writing ability of James Lee Burke. I came across some words Raymond Chandler recently that describe the possible requirements in a successful detective as Philip Marlowe. Chandler wrote in "The Simple Art of Murder":

'In evening that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.... down theses mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man...

He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks-that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.

The story is this man's adventure in the search of a hidden truth,...If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in."

This does refer to a certain kind of detective but I couldn't help matching some of these qualities Chandler talks of with David Robicheaux

James lee Burke's usage of metaphors and descriptive writing is astounding and makes the reading that much more enjoyable. It almost like while reading this story your thinking the whole end of the story the purpose or theme is not the that crucially important because the sentence by sentence masterful writing that you find within this story is the real joy of reading. This story is a grand work of fiction that incorporates many stark human realities and consequences of evil.

Creole Belle and Glass rainbow are two novels I read in succession that gave me a whole different outlook on writing style.

This story will have you hooked and captivated with the need for a swift resolution, love, vengeance and redemption.

 

Now for some notable excerpts from this novel:

Tee Joile being described by David..

"Her eyes were blue-green, her hair long and mahogany-coloured with twists of gold in it that were as bright as buttercups. She was part Indian and part Cajun and part black and belonged to that ethnic group we call Creoles, although the term is a misnomer."

 

"For me, Louisiana has always been a haunted place. I believe the spectres of slaves and Houma and Atakapa Indians and pirates and Confederate soldiers and Acadian farmers and plantation belles are still out there in the mist. I believe their story has never been adequately told and they'd will never rest until it is. I also believe my home state is cursed by ignorance and poverty and racism, much of it deliberately inculcated to control a vulnerable electorate."

 

"I've acquired little wisdom with age. For me, the answers to the great mysteries seem more remote than ever. Emotionally, I cannot accept that a handful of evil men, none of whom fought in a war, some of whom never served in the military, can send thousands of their fellow countrymen to their deaths or bring about the deaths or maiming of hundreds of thousands of civilians and be lauded for their deeds. I don't know why the innocent suffer. Nor can I comprehend the addiction that laid waste to my life but still burns like a hot coal buried under the ash, biding its time until an infusion of fresh oxygen blows it alight. I do not understand why my Higher Power saved me from the fate I designed for myself, while others of far greater virtue and character have been allowed to fall by the wayside. I suspect there are answers to all of these questions, but I have found none of them.

For me, the greatest riddle involves the nature of evil. Is there indeed a diabolical force at work in our midst, a satanic figure with leathery wings and the breath of a carrion eater?

Any police officer would probably say he'd need to look no further than his fellow man in order to answer that question. We all know that the survivors of war rarely speak of their experience. We tell ourselves they do not want to relive the horror of the battlefield. I think the greater reason for reticence lies in their charity, because they know that the average person cannot deal with the images of a straw village worked over by aGatling gun or Zippo-tracks, or women and children begging for their lives in the bottom of an open ditch, or GIs hanged in trees and skinned alive. The same applies to cops who investigate homicides, sexual assaults, and child abuse. A follower of Saint Francis of Assisi, looking at the photographs of the victims taken at the time of the injury, would have a struggle with his emotions regarding abolition of the death penalty.

Regardless, none of this resolves the question. Perhaps there's a bad seed at work in our loins. Were there two groups simian creatures vying for control of the gene pool, one fairly decent, the other defined by their canine teeth? Did we descend out of a bad mix, some of us pernicious from the day of our conception? Maybe. Ask any clinician inside the system how a sociopath thinks. He'll be the first to tell you he doesn't have a clue. Sociopaths are narcissists, and as such, they believe that reality conforms to whatever they say it is. Consequently, they are convincing liars, often passing polygraph tests and creating armies of supporters."

 

 

"Gretchen Horowitz did not contend with the nature of the world. In her opinion, no survivor did. The world was a giant vortex, anchored in both the clouds and the bottom of space, at any given time swirling with a mix of predators and conmen and professional victims and members of the herd who couldn't wait to get in lockstep with everyone around them. She felt little compassion or pity for any of them. But there was a fifth group, the arms and heads and legs of the individuals so tiny they could barley be seen. The children did not make the world. Nor did they have the ability to protect themselves from the cretins who preyed upon them. She did not speculate on the afterlife or the punishment or rewards it might offer. Instead, Gretchen Horowitz wanted to see judgement and massive amounts of physical damage imposed on child abuses in this life, not the next."

 

"The concerns that beset Clete for most of his life had disappeared, only to be replaced by the conviction that every tick of the second hand on his wristwatch was an irrevocable subtraction from his time on earth.

He knew that death could come in many ways, almost all of them bad. Those who said otherwise had never smelled the odour of a field mortuary in a tropical country when the gas-powered refrigeration failed. Nor had they lain on a litter next to a back marine trying to hold his entrails inside his abdomen with his fingers. They had never heard a grown man cry out for his mother in a battalion aid tent. Death squeezed the breath from your chest and the light from your eyes. It was not kind or merciful; it lived in bed sheets that stuck to the body and wastebaskets filled with bloody gauze and the hollow eyed stare of emergency room personal who went forty-eight hours without sleep during Hurricane Katrina. It invaded your dreams and mocked your sunrise and stood next to your reflection in the mirror. Sex and booze and dope brought you no respite. When you lived in proximity to death, even a midday slumber was filled with needles and shards of glass, and the smallest sounds made the side of your face twitch like a tightly wound rubber band."

 

 

"When you hover on the edge of the grave, when you feel that the act of shutting your eyes will cause you to loose all control over your life, that in the next few seconds you will be dropped into a black hole from which you will never exit, you ave an epiphany about existence that others will not understand. Every sunrise of your life will become a candle that you carry with you until sunset, and anyone who tries to touch it or blow out its flame will do so at moral risk. There's a syndrome called the thousand-yard stare. Soldiers bring it back from places that later are reconfigured into memorial parks filled with statuary and green lawns and rows of white crosses and landscape on a killing field is a poor anodyne for those who fear their fate when they shut their eyes."

 

 

"We scuba dived off Seven Mile Reef and trolled for marlin and, in the evening, cooked redfish wrapped in tin foil on a hibachi on the beach in front of our motel down at the southernmost point on the island. The waves were black at night and strung with foam when they capped on the sandbars, and towards dawn, when the stars went out of the sky, the sun would rise without warning in an explosion of light on the eastern rim of the world, and the water outside our motel window would be flat and calm and turquoise and blue, dimpled with rain rings, and sometimes a flying fish would be sailing through the air as though determined to begin a new evolutionary cycle.

It was grand to be there on the watery edge of my country, amid it's colonial past and it's ties to the tropical world of John James Audubon and Jean Lafitte and missionaries who had knelt in the sand in belief that they found paradise. I wanted to forget the violence of the past and the faces of the men we had slain. I wanted to forget the dissembling and prevarications that constituted the official world in which I made my living, and most of all, I wanted to forget the lies that I had told others about the events on the bayou."

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[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite this being the 18th of the 19 Burke mysteries I have read featuring Louisiana homicide detective Dave Robicheaux, I feel a freshness to my pleasure of reading of this tale, reminding me of the proverb that you can’t step in the same river twice. His character is the same in many ways, walking the line as a family man and honest cop while still being haunted by his Vietnam experience, recovery from alcoholism, and propensity to use violence to solve problems. The enemies are still the complex mix of fundamentally evil people and others merely corrupted by greed or twisted by experience. His heroic quest this time is to find a missing Creole woman singer and the murderers of her teen sister.

Like a painter who uses thick globs of paint, Burke fills his frame with Dave's investigations of whether the bad guys are Nazi fanatics, sexual perverts, organized crime figures, or minions from the oil industry concerned with cover-ups over the BP disaster. What keeps the tale from becoming a cartoon or Mission Impossible scenario are the moral challenges Robicheaux faces in supporting his mirror-image compatriot Clete Purcell, who is a boozer and quicker to resort to violences. Trouble abounds when Clete tracks his daughter down and hires her as a partner in his detective agency, despite suspecting she is a hit-woman, and he has an affair with a woman involved the suspects. The almost mythic “over the top” elements in Burke’s writing can fly because of the way he grounds the narrative in the realistic portrayal of the personal struggles of his characters and his frequent use of perceptions of nature and the southern Louisiana environment as a lyrical touchstone for Robicheaux’s mind.

[Amorak Huey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love Dave Robicheaux and always will, even though yes, sometimes James Lee Burke's prose can tend toward the purple, purple like the brilliant bruise of a sunset over the bayou on a late-summer evening when the doves call a mournful tune like the blues and the nighthawks begin to flit in the dusk between the pine trees and the gnarled boughs of the cypress, when the humidity breaks and there's just a hint of cool in the murky air spreading over this land where the anger between those who have money and those who do not seeps into the bones of the people who live here, seeps into the earth itself like the blood of those who are gone and buried the way the American South buries its secrets -- just below the surface, lurking there, waiting for the moon to rise white like a skeleton over the bayou on an early-fall evening so the spirits we have cursed with generations of lies can rise, too, to haunt us like my dreams are haunted by the men I've killed, or hurt, and the men who wait out there in hopes of hurting me in return.

[Greg Tymn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoy Burke's descriptive prose...but not in the middle of a firefight in the climax of the novel. Unrealistic. Amateurish (outrageous when you consider the number of novels that Burke has written).

Burke also avoids the use of his own instruction to take out all unnecessary words. There were pages and pages of descriptive language that added nothing to the story. I felt I was reading a Burke parody.

Shotguns do not blow up and split from the muzzle to the breach when mud plugs the barrel. Don't believe me? Watch an episode of "Mythbusters".

By the end of this novel, I had little respect for Robicheaux. He obviously is not on his way to recovery as an alcoholic. Dry drunk? More like Dessicated Drunk. Either Burke does not understand alcoholism all that well or, if he himself has "issues", he needs serious help. Anyone with all the "voices in his head" and constant measurement of his place in the grand scheme of things is headed toward a psychotic break or suicide. Or both.

Robicheaux's attempt to fit within the law "while under a black flag" are not believable. Anyone who would hesitate in destroying the enemy in a firefight is an idiot. He shoots one bad guy without hesitation and yet hesitates on others? Schizoid. Anyone who has had military training would not allow the bad guys to get the drop on him in the manners described. These plot devices were poorly executed. Robicheuax has lost his appeal. I don't enjoy reading about self-absorbed, alcoholic narcissists the first person.

On the other hand, I like Clete. While larger than life, he represents some of the better qualities of humanity while at the same time reflecting some of the worst. A great character. Gretchen was also developed pretty well.

The book left many loose ends. What really happened at the bus station in Baton Rouge? What happened in Miami when Gretchen saved her mother? Why did Mickey show up late in the novel for a cameo role? What happened to the bad guys near the house after Clete started the fire?.....way too many loose ends. Was this novel thrown together? An afterthought? Was Burke under the weather when he wrote it?

If this was my first Burke novel, I wouldn't read another at the Kindle price for his novels. This novel requires a serious rewrite. I want 75% of my money back! This should have been a $2.99 Kindle book.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best Dave Robicheaux to date, of course I say that after completing each one in the series. Wow, the usual suspects are present, Dave, the irrepressible New Iberia Sheriff's office detective; Molly, a former nun and humanitarian volunteer and Dave's wife; Alafair, Dave & Molly's adopted Salvadorian daughter; Clete Purcell, Private Eye and Dave's best friend & the unsinkable Helen Swallows, Sheriff, New Iberia. This one follows the ususal pattern of confronting and becoming targets from south Louisiana's elitist highlife scum. However, there is a caviat at work in this one...we are introduced to Clete's daughter who he hasn't seen or spoken with since she a very little girl. Clete did not abandon her, but the circumstances at the time were in everyone's favor to separate from his addicted wife. He also tried to find her several times but to no avail.
We are introduced to the Dupree family and all of their baggage as an evil family dating back to the ovens of the Holocaust. Without further adieu, highly recommend the audio version narrated by Will Patton. It simply does not get any better that this in my humble...enjoy life on Bayou Teche and spend some time with the Robicheaux clan, you won't be disappointed.

[The Girl with the Sagittarius Tattoo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite Robicheaux, and that's REALLY saying something.

I also believe my home state is cursed by ignorance and poverty and racism, much of it deliberately inculcated to control a vulnerable electorate. And I believe many of the politicians in Louisiana are among the most stomach-churning examples of white trash and venality I have ever known. To me, the fact that large numbers of people find them humorously picaresque is mind numbing, on a level with telling fond tales of one's rapist.

Really, can't this be said of all politicians?

In the immediate aftermath of Clete and Dave being critically wounded by gunfire in The Glass Rainbow, Dave wakes up in Intensive Care having been through surgery and under heavy sedation. What follows may or may not have happened already; or it may happen next. Is it real or is it all a morphine-induced dream? I dunno, but it's a fantastic, lyrical, action-packed story with some of the most evil characters yet found in a Robicheaux novel.

Theologians and philosophers try to understand and explain the nature of God with varying degrees of success and failure. I admire their efforts. But I’ve never come to an understanding of man’s nature, much less God’s. 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? My insight into my fellow man is probably less informed than it was half a century ago. At my age, that’s not a reassuring thought.

One of Dave's bedside visitors is a young woman named Tee Jolie, a talented singer he had not seen for some time. She leaves him an iPod loaded with his favorite music, including a couple of herself on vocals. As Dave wakes up to other visitors like Molly, Alafair and Clete Purcell, he tries to show them Tee Jolie's music, but nobody hears her recordings but him. Meanwhile, an offshore oil rig has had a major disaster, spilling oil in unprecedented amounts. The spoilage is tainting seafood and birds far inland along the riverways. As leaders and residents of the Gulf states are coming to terms with the scope of the disaster, Dave and Clete are pulled into the mystery of a beautiful teenaged girl found floating offshore encased in a block of ice. She's identified as Blue, the sister of Tee Jolie - both of whom have been missing since before Dave was shot and went into emergency surgery.

Maybe you’ll have better luck dealing with the dead than I. They go where they want. They sit on your bed at night and stand behind you in the mirror. Once they locate you, they never rest. And you know what’s worse about them? When it’s your time, they’ll be your escorts, and they won’t be delivering you to a very good place. The dead are not given to mercy.

Man, this was really a good story; a bit more experimental than Burke's previous novels in the series. He plays a bit with timelines and storylines, and he introduces an important new character named Gretchen - Clete's illegitimate 25yo daughter. When bad guys decide that the best way to bend the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide is to kidnap their daughters, they learn you should never poke two Papa Bears with guns and little inhibition.

Speaking of which, I was thrilled to find that Creole Belle was highly focused on Clete. We see into his deep past as a young man in Vietnam, then returning to the States lost and disenchanted. I already liked Clete's character - welllll, it's safer to say I have a love/strangle relationship with him, as does Dave Robicheaux. But getting so much more of Clete's backstory and seeing his big heart on full display made me love him a lot more.

I'm over the hill for come-on lines. On a quiet day, I can hear my liver rotting. For exercise, I fall down.

This really is an excellent book. All the stars! Onward to The Light of the World - a book that, I believe, James Lee Burke intended to be the series finale before his publishers talked him into writing a few more.

[Kathleen Valentine · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Lee Burke is one of the finest writers in America today. His ability to capture the nuances of place, culture, and character is unrivaled and he is never better than in his Dave Robicheax novels. Robicheaux is both deeply spiritual and deeply flawed. As he continues his on-going fight against some of the most diabolical and perverse segments of society his fight with his own failings is always at the core of the story. In this multi-layered story as he attempts to find a missing singer whose sister has been pulled out of the bayou frozen in a block of ice, he encounters another purely evil character, Alexis Dupree, and his equally depraved son/grandson, Pierre. This time the stakes are higher because Dave's daughter Alafair is involved, his longtime friend and partner Clete Purcell seems to be sinking further and further into his addictions and wild behavior, and Clete's long-lost daughter Gretchen has joined them.

This is a great, tense, incredibly dark story -- bayou noir -- filled with outstanding characters and Will Patton does a superb job of capturing the personality of each one. This is a perfect combination of outstanding writing and outstanding narration. I finished this today and wish I could give it 12 stars. The ending is about the best ending I have read in a long time.

[Lee Henning · Rating 1 out of 5]

I believe I have read all of Burke's stories. Some I have loved, some I felt were only ok. This one I simply did not like. It goes on forever about the tormented soul of poor Clete, and how he is one of the best men in the world. How someone who has the self control of a wasp and the same moral center, can be so wonderful is just insane. He kills, maimes, boozes, and screws with the self control of a tom cat. It makes him sometimes interesting but a good guy, really!

Gag me w/ a spoon. Burke has always enjoyed the metaphysical torment of his characters. Clete is almost an absolute ass and little better than those Burke condemns. However, the others are evil incarnate and Clete is the one of the best men in the world???

Good and evil are not so simple. We all have both in ourselves. My main complaints are two fold. 1. The book goes on and on and on about the poor tormented souls of Dave and Clete and Clete's daughter. 2. The extreme over moralizing and simplistic moralizing are not at all credible.

The only reason I finished this book is because I paid good money for it. Save a few buck and read this only after it gets released to the libraries. It is a true disappointment as a great summer read. Hopefully the latest Gabriel Allon by Silva will not be such a disappointment.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, it took me a while to get here, but ... given that a friend introduced me to Robicheaux with book number 20 in this series (having first tempted me with one of the Hackberry Holland books) ... now I find myself a few years ... and a couple of dozen books ... later ... with only three (3) Robicheaux books remaining, plus, of course, plus four (3)Billy Bob Holland books.

I can't say that this one was necessarily that much better than any of the others, but I fully enjoyed it, and it served me well over the course of a number of long flights. Having said that, it was compelling enough that, once the finish line was in sight, I concede I made a poor decision, prioritizing finishing the book before I went to sleep over, well, getting enough sleep. Life is a never-ending series of forks in the road, difficult decision, tradeoffs, and, yet, the good news is, I finished the book, but not the series, so it's like having your cake and eating it too.

[Roger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must start by declaring that I am a James Lee Burke fan. I have read all of his books and most of his short stories. I have recommended him to family and friends and , while all may not be quite as big fans as I am (some are), nobody underestimates the quality of his writing.

It seems to me that James Lee Burke has two main problems in gaining full recognition as the fine novelist that he undoubtedly is. One is that he writes what is pigeon-holed as “crime fiction” and the other is that he is still alive. Since he is unlikely to wish to do anything to change either of those conditions it follows that he will continue to be under-appreciated by the wider literary world. That is their loss.

Those of us who know better, and judging by the reviews on here there are quite a few of us, know that he is a superb writer of, almost literally, breathtaking prose. In my opinion, what he has written in Creole Belle stands comparison with, for example, Conrad's “Heart of Darkness” or anything by Cormac McCarthy (whose work I also admire greatly).

A multi-layered story with a large cast of powerfully drawn characters, it combines the strengths of a crime thriller with almost documentary style comment on the ecological degradation that mankind has brought to some of the most sensitive and beautiful parts of our world. The book shows us with painful clarity not just people's inhumanity to other people but also to the rest of our planet. It is not an easy read at times, but great books seldom are.

There are just so many examples of beautiful writing in this book that, at times, the poetry almost overwhelms the plot. But Mr Burke always brings us back to earth with pieces such as this:

“It was the kind of timeless evening in Louisiana when spring and fall and winter and summer come together in a perfect equinox, so exquisite and lovely that the dying of the light seems a violation of a divine ordinance. It was an evening that was wonderful in every way possible. Street musicians were playing in Jackson Square; the air smelled of beignets baking in Café du Monde; the clouds were ribbed like strips of fire above a blue band of light that still clung to the bottom of the sky. Maybe there was even a possibility of turning around in a café and unexpectedly seeing a beautiful woman’s smile. It was an evening that would have been good for anything except an unannounced visit by Bix Golightly and a pimple-faced part-time killer and full-time punk named Waylon Grimes”.

The characters are, if possible, even more strongly drawn than in his other books and stand out with almost 3D-like clarity. Even the most minor players are fully rounded and jump off of the page. His anger at the way his homeland has been exploited is immense and deeply felt and communicates itself so powerfully at least to this reader. His humanity is deeply touching. None of his characters are without fault but most, including some of the nastiest, are allowed some measure of redemption.

Are there any faults? Yes there are. The book is too long – a fault shared by too many books these days. He can bang on a bit too much about his own hobby horses (such as the people who inhabit Hollywood – are they really all psychos as Mr Burke suggests?). Sometimes his descriptions do run away with themselves . Sometimes a bit of lightness would not come amiss. But these faults only occur because he is trying so hard to do something special. We should never knock somebody down for trying to be the very best.

I really struggle to see how anybody could read this book and not be touched, moved and affected by it. It is also quite simply a thumping good read; one of James Lee Burke's very best. One word of warning – if you have not read any of the previous Dave Robicheaux books, it may be best not to start with this one. At least read “The Glass Rainbow” first, it will help your understanding.

[judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

At some point, I'm not sure when, Burke's peerless crime novels evolved into mini-courses in the humanities. What would you like--literature, the classics, linguistics, history, law, philosophy, religion, ethics, the arts, sociology, psychology, anthropology--or even some natural sciences? Burke covers them all and not simply by casual mention. With each book, he seems to give us more about which we can think deeply and more from which to learn. If, however, you need your leisure reading to be strictly entertainment, his powerful plots and beloved characters will have you turning the pages more quickly than ever. I'm tempted to say that nobody does it better but, aside from James Lee Burke, no one does it at all.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

James Lee Burke, one of my favorite writers and responsible for nearly twenty volumes in the Dave Robicheaux series, still commands a wonderful array of descriptive language and usually tells a good story and people who love his characters probably don’t quibble about his prose, but he seems to be aging in style and power somewhat, now unable to avoid repetition both from previous volumes and even within these pages. In fact, I think it is time to wrap up the series, perhaps. There was a part of me that kept saying that he simply doesn’t have that much more to explore, even if new characters are added. And OMG, the “ands” rush by like a herd of deer in front of a firestorm (in one sentence I counted six). I suspect the publisher, knowing any new Burke would have built-in sales, forgoed assigning an editor to his best-selling producer, and no one apparently calls Burke to account. Sometimes the infractions are minor, such as having two characters include “over the hurdles” just pages apart to more egregious problems of retelling information the reader should be able to retain on their own. Sometimes characters, not directly connected and at varied points, bring up the same historical events or remembrances (door gunner who couldn’t wait to get back to a free-fire zone). He is consistent with his former novels in the series (and outside as well) in his toilet and scatological references (someone always seems to be killed or beaten in a bathroom and something---often repeatedly--will be referenced going up a rear or spit in someone’s mouth or an item will be needed to be removed from a mouth). His dialogue is almost always angry: hardly ever can two characters, no matter when in the book, have a peaceful or genuine conversation, as they seem to be bitter and distrustful and dishonest and hateful and (wait, I’m sounding too much like JLB). And they all talk the same. Burke simply is unable to give characters unique tone (with the exception of some of the minor characters with local color). Still, I liked the story. I actually thought a favored character might be headed for his demise, but no. I am thinking about not reading any more of his books, but I would be willing to bet I’ll be first in line when another comes out.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can say that this book is one of James Lee Burke's finest. Creole Bell gives you an insiders look into how corrupt the oil industry really is. That Louisiana is still reeling from oil washing to shore and coating everything in it's path. And the amount of personal depth these characters have makes your soul hurt. So much corruption and in the middle of it is Dave and Clete and the whole family. Mr. Burke's story of Clete is one of my favorites. Clete dives into everything head first, but you know he's the best and truest person there is. I love this character. And Dave, as always is trying to balance doing the right thing against surviving the worst bad guys ever. What a balancing act.
On another note.... When I read this, I feel like I've been given the chance to look into Mr. Burkes personal loss of Louisiana. I read the words and feel his immense anger at how big money has run a muck and devastated his home. That no amount of money or scooping oil clumps up is ever going to fix the mess. And that we, as individuals are so use to being told that it's nothing, we believe what they say, and will, until the day there is no clean water left to drink. Mr. Burke's words haunt me. Thank you, James Lee Burke for giving us another stunning story. It is so much more that just a "who dun it". Every time I read one of your books, your words make me feel like I'm there. I can feel the air, smell the flowers, taste the gumbo. I feel like I've really read an authentic telling of a place that is mythical and huge. And I will always picture John Goodman walking the streets of New Orleans, as he does in real life.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dave Robicheaux is recovering from a wound he received in a prior case. He's being treated in New Orleans and given morphene for this pain. As an alcoholic, he's having trouble managing his medicines.

A young woman, Tee Jolie, visits him one night and brings an i-Pad so he can listen to music. She tells him she's pregnant from a man who isn't divorced yet. When he wakes up, he isn't sure if it was a dream, but then sees the i-Pod. Then he learns that Tee Jolie is missing and he speeds up his recovery so he can work on the case.

A contract killer comes to New Orleans. Some mobsters who had dealings with Dave and his best friend, Clete, end up dead. Then Clete meets a woman, Gretchen Horowitz and thinks that she might be his daughter from a brief romance he had many years ago. He wonders if Gretchen could be the contract killer and hopes she's not trying to harm anyone dear to Clete.

As Dave searches for Tee Jolie, he comes across Pierre DuPres and his grandfather who had a questionable past in regards to his actions during WWII.

Dave and Clete are two of the excellent characters in mystery literature today. I was entertained by their actions as well as other colorful characters in the story.

This is a novel not to be missed. It adds to Burke's legend as one of our best writers.

[Cher · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can one say that has not already been said about James Lee Burke's writings? The usual-greatest American author of this century, poetic lyrical prose, beautiful descriptive narrative about the corrupt Southern Louisiana Cajun countryside and how best friends till-they-die Clete Purcel and Dave Robicheaux try and usually succeed to either kill off or arrest the pure evil that permeates the colorful landscape that Mr. Burke burns into our brain. My said brain will never look at the world the same ever again, however, I have been enriched beyond my wildest dreams by his weaving of plot twists like no other and for filling me up with a sense of justice the likes of which this world should see up front and personal. His books should be required reading in every ethics class in every university, maybe then this world would be a better place to live in. But the world Mr. Burke has created in New Iberia will never leave us as long as we keep Clete and Dave in our minds and hearts-forever. Creole Belle is just one more in a long line of wonderful books that are more thought provoking than any other writer of our age. If he set out to change the way we look at things-he has succeeded beyond measure.

[notgettingenough · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recalling the first James Lee Burke I read, which was short stories, I can’t help thinking in his case that less is more. Has he gone the way of so many writers who seem to get to a point where they eschew an editor? I’m not sure why any book by Burke would need over 500 pages, but this one has almost no plot. Even if somebody had trimmed a hundred pages off it, it would still be a story cushioned in a lot more words than warranted. It is painfully repetitive, points that could have been made deftly once, hammered home time and time again. But it seems like an author gets to a point where nobody minds what he does any more. Reputation is everything. This book gets rave reviews which are not deserving.

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[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fantastic read in the Dave Robicheaux series and this is one of the best.Burke maintains such a high standard in his writing its quite an achievement, the characters are deeply drawn and there are many layers within, and in Clete Purcel we have one of the greatest characters ever!.Its a long book but does not seem it and in places is totally gripping.Highly recommended.

[Pop · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually don’t know what to say about this book. I have read a lot of James Lee Burke’s books over the years, enjoyed them, but I really didn’t enjoy this one. Something about it just didn’t sit well with me. Maybe it’s that I like a story and not an analysis of the characters, I don’t know, and It is an awfully long book too. Just over 500 pages and hard to really get interested in it without wanting to get on with the story.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dave Robicheaux and his buddy Cletes take on high level organized crime after thhe body of a girl they knew washes ashore in frozen in a block of ice. This is a gripping thriller in Burke's unique fashion and worth reading.

[Truman32 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creole Belle is yet another outstanding novel by James Lee Burke. I’m warning you now that this is going to be a gushing review of what I believe to be one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His writing is an American national treasure that should be held right up there with Hopper paintings or Gershwin songs.

I’ve been reading the books in Burke’s Dave Robicheaux series for many years now and I can not remember them being this fantastic. Maybe it’s my age now; maybe his stories have gotten better. Either way, the last several books have been nothing less then out of this world great.

Creole Bell finds New Iberia Sheriffs Detective Dave Robicheaux still kicking around. After being shot up pretty badly at the conclusion of the last novel, he is now recuperating in a New Orleans hospital. But any chance of a peaceful convalescence is short lived as a young woman; Tee Jolie Melton has disappeared. Is this a kidnapping? Is she dead? Nobody knows, yet she mysteriously calls Robicheaux and leaves him mysterious gifts such as an iPod loaded with old blues songs. Nobody else seems to see these clues the way Robicheaux does, and many worry about his sanity and his sobriety. Robicheaux and his partner, the marvelous Clete Purcel, are likewise coming to grips with old age and death, the realization they won’t be here forever.

But to be clear, the tales James Lee Burke spins are secondary to they way he spins them. At one moment in Creole Bell, Robicheaux’s daughter, a writer, speaks of how she creates a story and it is hard to believe this is not Burke himself shining a light on the process of creating his wonderful novels.

“I make it up each day.” Alafair Robicheaux explains. “ I never see more than two scenes ahead. …I think a story is written in the unconscious. You discover it a day at a time. “ And this is how Burke’s novels unwind too. They are wandering, expanding, repeating, and meandering. Side plots appear and disappear—there are stolen paintings mentioned, maybe the fear that recovering alcoholic Robicheaux is now addicted to painkillers—then are not mentioned again. Characters show up and then are gone. It is all very stream of consciousness. What holds it all together and makes it so special is Burkes’s incredible writing. His prose is like poetry. His descriptions of Louisiana are legend. His perspective on human behavior and his observations on evil, courage, prejudice are sensitive and aware. But what I particularly love is how forceful and muscular his prose can be. Check out these quotes from the books—they are tough enough to bend nails:


“Why put yourself in the mind of perps? It’s like submerging your hand in an unflushed toilet.”

“Ozone Eddy was to New Orleans what mustard gas was to trench warfare; you tried to stay upwind from him, but it was not an easy task.”

“We can’t blow this one, partner. Rules are for people who want to feel good about themselves in the morning. They’re not for people who want to save their children’s lives.”

“You want to crack wise? I hope you do, because I’m going to bust your spokes right now, head to foot.”

This is so great! Even Bad Bad Leroy Brown might think twice about messing with these guys.

Everything in this novel is a delight and I defy any reader to put the book down when they get to the last 60 pages. The climax is wrapped so tightly it will make your hands sweat.

[Michael McLean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like many of Burke's readers I thought The Glass Rainbow could have been the last go round for Dave and Clete, the best set of literary lawmen since Woodrow and Augustus. James Lee once again cranks up the full tilt boogie and brings us along for the ride as his flawed but fascinating duo ride out yet another wave. Aside from Burke's oft noted poetic waxes what makes this series so spectacular for me is the fact that Dave understands what destruction awaits the edenic area of Louisiana that he loves. And he mourns for it. He takes us back to his youth before the wetlands began disappearing and the fish and wildlife took on an oily sheen. He loves his family and his friend, Cletus almost to a fault. He recognizes and battles with his own alcoholic demons and still stays sober because he knows he probably couldn't come back safely from those clutches. Creole Belle introduces us to several new characters some with a lot more staying power than others.

If you've followed Dave's adventures up to now you certainly shouldn't break away from Iberia Parish and New Orleans, and his other environs just yet. There are more bad people to tie up and more interesting Cajuns to meet. Enjoy, no savor this one. Last call could be right around the bend.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creole Belle by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster) is dark, with ghostly undertones, as the author continues to expertly weave the historical and contemporary attitudes and circumstances of the rich and poor, multi-racial inhabitants of Louisiana and their crimes and vices into his fiction. One late night as Dave Robicheaux lies half asleep in a drug haze of painkillers recovering from severe gunshot wounds in a New Orleans hospital, he’s visited by a young Creole barroom singer who brings him some of her music. Or does she? It turns out Tee Jolie Melton has been missing for several weeks and no one else can hear the music on Dave’s ipod. Upon his recovery Dave’s search for Tee Jolie embroils him in ugly, perverse, and violent conflicts. Burke has another winner in this nineteenth entry in the Dave Robicheaux series.

[Rex Fuller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's see...it takes the kind of patience expected when listening to a lady of the oldest generation telling of her long dead family and how they still might be heard in the rustle of the switchgrass and the swirl of the water from bream rolling in the tannic shallows of the Teche at the tide's ebb when the sun is low in the evening but its heat is not yet gone...

He really wants you to take it in through all of your senses and you do. If you find the action too slow you might well wonder if you have missed the point. The worst thing I can say about it is his cry from the heart against oil pollution almost becomes preachy. This is one of Burke's best.