What do you think?
Rate this book
Dave Robicheaux #20
Light of the World
In Light of the World, sadist and serial killer Asa Surrette narrowly escaped the death penalty for the string of heinous murders he committed while capital punishment was outlawed in Kansas. But following a series of damning articles written by Dave Robicheaux's daughter Alafair about possible other crimes committed by Surette, the killer escapes from a prison transport van and heads to Montana, where an unsuspecting Dave happens to have gone to take in the sweet summer air, accompanied by Alafair, his wife Molly, faithful partner Clete, and Clete's newfound daughter, Gretchen Horowitz, whom readers met in Burke's Creole Belle.
560 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 23, 2013
1067 people are currently reading
3551 people want to read
About the author
James Lee Burke
123 books4,173 followersJames 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.
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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 864 reviews
November 29, 2021
In this 20th book in the 'Dave Robicheaux' series, the Louisiana detective is on vacation in Montana, but can't get away from vicious criminals. The book can be read as a standalone, but familiarity with the series is a plus.
*****
Louisiana Sheriff's Detective Dave Robichaux is on vacation in Montana with his wife Molly, novelist daughter Alafair, and private detective friend Clete Purcell. They are soon joined by Gretchen Horowitz, the daughter Clete first met when she was an adult. Gretchen, severely abused as a child, was once a hit-woman for the mob. She's now a filmmaker, making a documentary about oil shale drilling.
The visitors are staying at the ranch of Dave's friend Albert Hollister, a famous writer and environmental activist.
Trouble soon rears it head when someone shoots an arrow at Alafair while she's jogging.
In addition, a local teenage girl, Angel Deer Heart, is abducted and killed. Angel is the adopted daughter of Caspian Younger and his wife Felicity Louviere; Angel's grandfather is Love Younger, one of the wealthiest men in the country. As usual in Burke's books, the 'evil wealthy family' - in this case the Youngers - harbor dark secrets and are apparently up to no good.
Clete Purcell also stays true to character and falls under the spell of a beautiful young woman, this time the married Felicity Louviere. As Clete gets older and less healthy in book after book, this trope gets increasingly harder to accept.
Dave comes to suspect that the perpetrator of bad deeds is the sadistic serial killer Asa Surrette, about whom Alafair wrote a series of scathing articles when he was in prison.
Though Surette is officially 'dead' - killed when a prison transport was in a fiery collision - Dave is convinced he survived and is in Montana. Dave fears that Surette means to continue his murderous spree in Montana and that he has Alafair in his sights.
Basically the story is about Dave and Clete trying to stop Asa Surette while they expose the sinister doings of the Younger family. Alafair and Gretchen are on board with this agenda, getting into various kinds of trouble along the way. Gretchen especially has the bad luck to meet the worst people imaginable.
There are a plenty of additional characters in the story: a troubled but tough rodeo cowboy, his lady friend, a local sheriff, corrupt law enforcement officers, some vicious thugs, and so on. There is also a prominent sub-theme about whether evil is a real, tangible thing. Dave's frequent musings on the subject seemed a bit hazy to me and somewhat disconnected from the story.
Burke's ongoing characters are favorites of mine and I always enjoy visiting with them in his books. I also liked the basic mystery premise of the story, and even some of the sub-plots. However, there were elements of the story that didn't come together at the end and one odd character seemed to be completely unexplained.
All in all I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to mystery fans.
You can follow my reviews at https://reviewsbybarbsaffer.blogspot....
October 27, 2013
Sometimes it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. As far as I know, no one does this better than James Lee Burke. The good guys are bad, and the bad guys are really bad. It’s like reading about pure unadulterated evil crafted around poetic prose, and it’s pretty wonderful, even if he does create one fucked up universe.
LIGHT OF THE WORLD feels like it’s covered in pure darkness. It’s filled with sexual assault and rape and Russian roulette and dead bodies and exploding planes and serial killers resurrected from the dead and a rodeo cowboy with a dark, checkered past. It felt as gruesome as any Stephen King novel, only my first thought was this could really happen, and then my second thought was I don’t ever want to go to Montana. In fact, maybe we should remove the state from future maps of the US. And as far as actual vacations go, I wouldn’t wish this vacation on my worst enemy.
And you want to hear something even more screwed up than all of that? This novel was therapeutic, almost cathartic even, and it was exactly the right story for me to read at this particular juncture, after coming off an unhealthy stream of mediocre affairs. I had my love of reading jarred back into me like a masked man with a blackjack, brass knuckles, nunchaku, and a nine millimeter strapped to his waist. And I surrendered with a smile on my face.
Gretchen Horowitz sounds like the ideal male fantasy, all chestnut hair and tits and legs, until it was revealed that she could pull the ass out of a rhinoceros and she’d killed men without blinking an eyelash. Taking two in the face and one in the jugular while I slept suddenly sounded a whole lot less appealing.
Dave Robicheaux, though, makes these stories sing baritone from the first row of the choir. He has as many demons as he has friends, but that makes him all the more appealing. As for Clete Purcel, he likes to drink and he likes his women and he has no problem mixing the two, and married women aren’t any less appealing than the ones that aren’t. But that doesn’t make him a bad man, just a highly tormented one, in a novel chock full of demented individuals, many of which, sheriffs and detectives included, ought to be locked in the slammer with the guard swallowing the key like he was a street performer in the middle of Las Vegas.
The plot proved more challenging than a Montana mountain range. With twists and turns and double backs and winding roads and steep cliffs with jagged edges and serpentine monsters waiting at the top of the next pass. In other words, it was a beautiful, complicated monstrosity filled with piss and spit and spite and it roared with its jaws open wide and it slashed its claws six inches in front of my face.
I received this book for free through NetGalley.
Cross-posted at Robert's Reads
LIGHT OF THE WORLD feels like it’s covered in pure darkness. It’s filled with sexual assault and rape and Russian roulette and dead bodies and exploding planes and serial killers resurrected from the dead and a rodeo cowboy with a dark, checkered past. It felt as gruesome as any Stephen King novel, only my first thought was this could really happen, and then my second thought was I don’t ever want to go to Montana. In fact, maybe we should remove the state from future maps of the US. And as far as actual vacations go, I wouldn’t wish this vacation on my worst enemy.
And you want to hear something even more screwed up than all of that? This novel was therapeutic, almost cathartic even, and it was exactly the right story for me to read at this particular juncture, after coming off an unhealthy stream of mediocre affairs. I had my love of reading jarred back into me like a masked man with a blackjack, brass knuckles, nunchaku, and a nine millimeter strapped to his waist. And I surrendered with a smile on my face.
Gretchen Horowitz sounds like the ideal male fantasy, all chestnut hair and tits and legs, until it was revealed that she could pull the ass out of a rhinoceros and she’d killed men without blinking an eyelash. Taking two in the face and one in the jugular while I slept suddenly sounded a whole lot less appealing.
Dave Robicheaux, though, makes these stories sing baritone from the first row of the choir. He has as many demons as he has friends, but that makes him all the more appealing. As for Clete Purcel, he likes to drink and he likes his women and he has no problem mixing the two, and married women aren’t any less appealing than the ones that aren’t. But that doesn’t make him a bad man, just a highly tormented one, in a novel chock full of demented individuals, many of which, sheriffs and detectives included, ought to be locked in the slammer with the guard swallowing the key like he was a street performer in the middle of Las Vegas.
The plot proved more challenging than a Montana mountain range. With twists and turns and double backs and winding roads and steep cliffs with jagged edges and serpentine monsters waiting at the top of the next pass. In other words, it was a beautiful, complicated monstrosity filled with piss and spit and spite and it roared with its jaws open wide and it slashed its claws six inches in front of my face.
I received this book for free through NetGalley.
Cross-posted at Robert's Reads
September 28, 2013
I couldn’t put it down as I slaked my addiction for Burke’s tales of a modern knight facing down the evils of our world and in our hearts. In this 20th in the series of books featuring Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux, our intrepid, aging hero is on a vacation in Montana with his former partner Clete, wife Molly, and daughter Alafair when trouble begins in the form of an anonymous arrow grazing his daughter while on a jog. A cryptic message on the wall of a cave at a friend’s ranch where they are staying reads:
I was here but you did not know me. Before there was an alpha and omega I was here. I am the one before whom every knee shall bend.
So marks the entry of yet another twisted, loony-tunes villain into the path of the Robicheaux band. Some abductions and killings in the region have the MO of a serial killer and pedophile, Asa Surette, whom Alafair once angered when she interviewed him in prison in Kansas and wrote up in a negative light. Another enemy force at play is a resident oil tycoon from Kentucky, Love Younger, whom their host has angered in political controversies over shale oil development and whom seems to have bought off the local police to pin the murders on the wrong suspect. That suspect is Wyatt Dixon, a rodeo man with a violent past but now reformed as an evangelical who speaks in tongues at revival gatherings. He is a colorful creation of Burke revived from a central role in “Bitterroot”, a novel in his other mystery series featuring ex-Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland. Dave struggles to put him into a category he can understand:
His mind-set was one that every Southerner recognizes. Whether it’s a defective element in the gene pool or an atavistic throwback to the peat bogs of Celtic Europe, it is nonetheless the family heirloom of a class of people who are not only uneducable but take pride in their ignorance and their potential for violence. If you have the opportunity, study their faces carefully in a photograph, perhaps one taken at what they call a “cross lighting”, and tell me they descend from the same tree as the rest of us.
One by one and in various combinations, the Robicheaux team takes various angles on solving the mystery, and each gets into serious trouble with a growing set of enemies, each crossing the threshold of using violence outside the boundaries of the law. They are joined in the fray by Clete’s recently discovered daughter, Gretchen, who had a former career as a hit-man as an excuse to get back at those who abused her when she was growing up. The art in this book lies in showing how the good guys and bad guys are all similar in struggling with demons from their past but differ in how much they take their frustrations out on innocent people. The excess in repetition in the round robin of dangerous conflicts becomes an exaltation of Burke’s writing trajectory, a virtual apotheosis if you will. Burke pays homage to his writing hero Faulkner by having Younger be subject to the same mythic condition as Sutpen in “Absalom, Absalom!”:
For Love Younger, depression was another term for self-pity. He had only one problem: He could not reason himself out of the black box he found himself inside. …The story of Love Younger was simple. He had committed the worst crime of which an ordinary human being was capable: He had destroyed his family.
A theme seems to emerge of various Southerners working out their past in the paradise of Montana. The location is the site of Lewis and Clarke’s passage over the Bitterroot Mountains and that of the Nez Perce tribe’s doomed run from the U.S. Army. As always with Burke, he shines in how he has Robicheaux periodically touch base with the lyrical beauty of nature around him. It makes the place of the story a character, as illustrated in this example:
Many of the boulders are flat-topped and are wonderful to walk out on so you can fly-cast and create a wide-looping figure eight over your head and not hang your fly in the trees. Wild roses grow along the banks, as well as bushes and leafy vines that turn orange and scarlet and apricot and plum in the autumn. When the wind comes up the canyon, leaves and pine needles balloon into the air, as though the entirety of the environment is in reality a single organism that created its own rebirth and obeys its own rules and takes no heed of man’s presence.
…We wade into water up to our hips and fished a pool behind a beaver dam where both rainbows and cut-throats were hitting anything we threw at them. …All of the worries and concerns that plague us on a daily basis seem to dissolve and disappear, like smoke, inside this sun-spangled canyon deep in the heart of Blackfoot country.
The Gothic excess in this novel puts it in a different class from most genre mysteries. The stories of each character separate and converge like a braided stream, all flowing toward the same ocean of a civilization unable to return to Eden. I see no reason that a prospective reader of Burke couldn’t start with this one. What you would miss from not reading earlier ones in the series is a sense of longstanding concern for Robicheaux’s soul and a history to account for why he is so bonded to Clete, whom he forgives for his binges, troubled love relationships, and low threshold for use of violence.
I was here but you did not know me. Before there was an alpha and omega I was here. I am the one before whom every knee shall bend.
So marks the entry of yet another twisted, loony-tunes villain into the path of the Robicheaux band. Some abductions and killings in the region have the MO of a serial killer and pedophile, Asa Surette, whom Alafair once angered when she interviewed him in prison in Kansas and wrote up in a negative light. Another enemy force at play is a resident oil tycoon from Kentucky, Love Younger, whom their host has angered in political controversies over shale oil development and whom seems to have bought off the local police to pin the murders on the wrong suspect. That suspect is Wyatt Dixon, a rodeo man with a violent past but now reformed as an evangelical who speaks in tongues at revival gatherings. He is a colorful creation of Burke revived from a central role in “Bitterroot”, a novel in his other mystery series featuring ex-Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland. Dave struggles to put him into a category he can understand:
His mind-set was one that every Southerner recognizes. Whether it’s a defective element in the gene pool or an atavistic throwback to the peat bogs of Celtic Europe, it is nonetheless the family heirloom of a class of people who are not only uneducable but take pride in their ignorance and their potential for violence. If you have the opportunity, study their faces carefully in a photograph, perhaps one taken at what they call a “cross lighting”, and tell me they descend from the same tree as the rest of us.
One by one and in various combinations, the Robicheaux team takes various angles on solving the mystery, and each gets into serious trouble with a growing set of enemies, each crossing the threshold of using violence outside the boundaries of the law. They are joined in the fray by Clete’s recently discovered daughter, Gretchen, who had a former career as a hit-man as an excuse to get back at those who abused her when she was growing up. The art in this book lies in showing how the good guys and bad guys are all similar in struggling with demons from their past but differ in how much they take their frustrations out on innocent people. The excess in repetition in the round robin of dangerous conflicts becomes an exaltation of Burke’s writing trajectory, a virtual apotheosis if you will. Burke pays homage to his writing hero Faulkner by having Younger be subject to the same mythic condition as Sutpen in “Absalom, Absalom!”:
For Love Younger, depression was another term for self-pity. He had only one problem: He could not reason himself out of the black box he found himself inside. …The story of Love Younger was simple. He had committed the worst crime of which an ordinary human being was capable: He had destroyed his family.
A theme seems to emerge of various Southerners working out their past in the paradise of Montana. The location is the site of Lewis and Clarke’s passage over the Bitterroot Mountains and that of the Nez Perce tribe’s doomed run from the U.S. Army. As always with Burke, he shines in how he has Robicheaux periodically touch base with the lyrical beauty of nature around him. It makes the place of the story a character, as illustrated in this example:
Many of the boulders are flat-topped and are wonderful to walk out on so you can fly-cast and create a wide-looping figure eight over your head and not hang your fly in the trees. Wild roses grow along the banks, as well as bushes and leafy vines that turn orange and scarlet and apricot and plum in the autumn. When the wind comes up the canyon, leaves and pine needles balloon into the air, as though the entirety of the environment is in reality a single organism that created its own rebirth and obeys its own rules and takes no heed of man’s presence.
…We wade into water up to our hips and fished a pool behind a beaver dam where both rainbows and cut-throats were hitting anything we threw at them. …All of the worries and concerns that plague us on a daily basis seem to dissolve and disappear, like smoke, inside this sun-spangled canyon deep in the heart of Blackfoot country.
The Gothic excess in this novel puts it in a different class from most genre mysteries. The stories of each character separate and converge like a braided stream, all flowing toward the same ocean of a civilization unable to return to Eden. I see no reason that a prospective reader of Burke couldn’t start with this one. What you would miss from not reading earlier ones in the series is a sense of longstanding concern for Robicheaux’s soul and a history to account for why he is so bonded to Clete, whom he forgives for his binges, troubled love relationships, and low threshold for use of violence.
July 31, 2013
I can't imagine what went wrong here. The entire group, including Clete's new hitman daughter, goes vigilante in the wilds of Montana. Alafair, who is a character I've wanted to slap almost since she entered the series, starts the book by confronting an innocent man over a presumed attempt on her life, then drags her father into the dispute, and it's all downhill from there. Confusing and improbable (REALLY? You have to make your villain actually STINK in an otherwordly fashion to justify vigilantism?), the book also has some shockingly badly written passages.
"...the salmon-colored sky and the neon ambience of the amusement rides and game booths and concession stands that had defined his youth and were, in his opinion, as much a stained-glass work of art as any fashioned by a medieval guildsman." WHAT???? There is another, even worse, that I can't at the moment locate.
The book is so preachy and full of justification for taking the law into one's own hands that I couldn't help missing a character named Dave Robicheaux, who used to search his soul in an attempt to root out his own violent tendences. His wife Molly, a lovely woman, appears to spend the majority of the novel under a floorboard somewhere, only to be pulled out to serve a last minute plot twist. There is some irritating mysticism and a bizarrely loose thread at the end...whew! What a disaster!
It's only getting that second star for some of the descriptive passages.
"...the salmon-colored sky and the neon ambience of the amusement rides and game booths and concession stands that had defined his youth and were, in his opinion, as much a stained-glass work of art as any fashioned by a medieval guildsman." WHAT???? There is another, even worse, that I can't at the moment locate.
The book is so preachy and full of justification for taking the law into one's own hands that I couldn't help missing a character named Dave Robicheaux, who used to search his soul in an attempt to root out his own violent tendences. His wife Molly, a lovely woman, appears to spend the majority of the novel under a floorboard somewhere, only to be pulled out to serve a last minute plot twist. There is some irritating mysticism and a bizarrely loose thread at the end...whew! What a disaster!
It's only getting that second star for some of the descriptive passages.
September 6, 2013
This is the last Robicheaux I will read - I thought the early books in the series were wonderful, but it's hard to know where to begin with the things I don't like about this book.
What is the opposite of character development - character deterioration? The self-righteous, sanctimonious streak that has been increasingly in evidence in Dave is in full flower here and it causes him to act like such a jerk that it's a wonder that anyone still puts up with him. Alafair, who has been pretty annoying since she hit puberty, is even more so. And, oh goody, she has inherited Dave's self-righteous streak even though she's adopted. Nurture versus nature?
Clete, poor slob, is still helplessly being led around by his privates, endlessly failing to learn from repeating the same mistake with different inappropriate women. Who keep falling for him even though he's pushing 70? Really?
The villains would require major surgery to acquire a second dimension - an evil oil baron and his inept degenerate son - what a concept! And Surette, the supernaturally evil serial killer who smells like dead pigs? Or their feces? To say cartoonish would be insulting to good cartoons.
To top it all off, the book is at least 200 pages too long, filled with self-indulgent bloat. Every character gets to have flashbacks and to muse philosophically about his or her favorite great issue. There are polemics on every conceivable subject. There is a half page devoted to a trivia quiz about the minor character actors in Shane, for god's sake. There is a ridiculous and lengthy conflation of Felicity, the mother of a murdered girl and Clete's latest love object, with St. Felicitas, the early Christian martyr. All of this to no apparent end save the increase of the price of the hardcover edition.
Every once in a while there is a brief passage that reminds the reader that Burke really is capable of good writing. Which only makes it worse.
What is the opposite of character development - character deterioration? The self-righteous, sanctimonious streak that has been increasingly in evidence in Dave is in full flower here and it causes him to act like such a jerk that it's a wonder that anyone still puts up with him. Alafair, who has been pretty annoying since she hit puberty, is even more so. And, oh goody, she has inherited Dave's self-righteous streak even though she's adopted. Nurture versus nature?
Clete, poor slob, is still helplessly being led around by his privates, endlessly failing to learn from repeating the same mistake with different inappropriate women. Who keep falling for him even though he's pushing 70? Really?
The villains would require major surgery to acquire a second dimension - an evil oil baron and his inept degenerate son - what a concept! And Surette, the supernaturally evil serial killer who smells like dead pigs? Or their feces? To say cartoonish would be insulting to good cartoons.
To top it all off, the book is at least 200 pages too long, filled with self-indulgent bloat. Every character gets to have flashbacks and to muse philosophically about his or her favorite great issue. There are polemics on every conceivable subject. There is a half page devoted to a trivia quiz about the minor character actors in Shane, for god's sake. There is a ridiculous and lengthy conflation of Felicity, the mother of a murdered girl and Clete's latest love object, with St. Felicitas, the early Christian martyr. All of this to no apparent end save the increase of the price of the hardcover edition.
Every once in a while there is a brief passage that reminds the reader that Burke really is capable of good writing. Which only makes it worse.
April 22, 2018
I picked up this book a few years ago in the bargain bin at BAM for one reason only. The setting was Flathead Lake in Montana as well as Missoula. I didn't know it was the 20th Robicheaux novel and I didn't know the author, James Lee Burke. When my wife and I were first married (pre-kids), the company that owned the television news station she worked for had cabins on Flathead Lake. We had a wonderful vacation there, in Missoula and skiing Big Mountain. (Tomorrow is our 30th wedding anniversary - my how time flies.)
When I started reading it - wow! James Lee Burke's writing is wonderfully descriptive. But wait! What did he just do? In the same chapter he writes first person for Dave Robicheaux then converts to third person for other characters. Who does this? Apparently James Lee Burke, and he does it very well. It didn't take me long to get used to it and fall into the story. Being the 20th Robicheaux novel, there was back story I didn't know but I felt he explained some of the characters very well for me - a Robicheaux virgin. The story was a gritty story of a serial killer and I enjoyed it. I will definitely try another. Perhaps I should start at Robicheaux #1?
When I started reading it - wow! James Lee Burke's writing is wonderfully descriptive. But wait! What did he just do? In the same chapter he writes first person for Dave Robicheaux then converts to third person for other characters. Who does this? Apparently James Lee Burke, and he does it very well. It didn't take me long to get used to it and fall into the story. Being the 20th Robicheaux novel, there was back story I didn't know but I felt he explained some of the characters very well for me - a Robicheaux virgin. The story was a gritty story of a serial killer and I enjoyed it. I will definitely try another. Perhaps I should start at Robicheaux #1?
November 26, 2016
In this 20th novel in the Dave Robicheaux series James Lee Burke is once again dealing with themes of good vs evil. The villain in this story is Asa Surrette, a sadist and serial killer, who has escaped from a Kansas prison. Surrette may be even more evil than Legion Guidry who we met in Jolie Blon's Bounce. Surrette avoided the death penalty because he was convicted at a time when the death penalty was outlawed by the state of Kansas. After Dave's daughter Alafair interviewed Surrette she becomes convinced that he is guilty of other murders and publishes a series of damning articles. Shortly after the publication of these articles Surrette escapes from a prison transport van and heads to Montana where Dave, his wife Molly, Alafair, his best friend Clete Purcell, and Clete's daughter Gretchen Horowitz are vacationing.
As usual in the Dave Robicheaux series there is a wealthy family that harbors dark secrets and epitomizes corruption. In this novel it is the Younger family ... patriarch Love Younger; his son Caspian; and daughter-in-law Felicity Louviere. Caspian and Felicity had an adopted daughter, Angel Deer Heart, who was abducted and killed. When someone shoots an arrow that narrowly misses Alafair the reader is at first led to believe that the responsible person is Wyatt Dixon, a born-again rodeo clown, but is soon left to wonder if it isn't Asa Surrette and whether there isn't a link between Surrette, the Younger's, and Dixon.
Readers of other books in this series are familiar with the author's delving into supernatural themes. In the bayous of Louisiana these often deal with the Civil War and Confederate soldiers. In this outing Burke touches on themes that seem almost Biblical. It seemed that at times these detracted from the story. Another detraction is that once again Clete falls into a relationship with a younger woman. This time it is Felicity Louviere. It stretches credibility that younger woman seduce Clete in every novel. While the age of Dave and Clete are never mentioned I believe they must be around 70 now? This story takes place in the summer of 2012. I believe Dave was born around 1942 and Clete is around Dave's age. Are we actually supposed to believe all of these women want to jump in bed with Clete?
Overall this was an enjoyable read. It wasn't the best book in the series. It wasn't the worse either. I have enjoyed the series but I hope that the author will end on a high note and not continue to drag it out. Maybe it is time for Dave and Clete to retire. Enjoy the fishing on Bayou Teche or in Montana and Banff National Park. Maybe let Alafair and Gretchen represent the good guys in the fight against all the evil in the world.
As usual in the Dave Robicheaux series there is a wealthy family that harbors dark secrets and epitomizes corruption. In this novel it is the Younger family ... patriarch Love Younger; his son Caspian; and daughter-in-law Felicity Louviere. Caspian and Felicity had an adopted daughter, Angel Deer Heart, who was abducted and killed. When someone shoots an arrow that narrowly misses Alafair the reader is at first led to believe that the responsible person is Wyatt Dixon, a born-again rodeo clown, but is soon left to wonder if it isn't Asa Surrette and whether there isn't a link between Surrette, the Younger's, and Dixon.
Readers of other books in this series are familiar with the author's delving into supernatural themes. In the bayous of Louisiana these often deal with the Civil War and Confederate soldiers. In this outing Burke touches on themes that seem almost Biblical. It seemed that at times these detracted from the story. Another detraction is that once again Clete falls into a relationship with a younger woman. This time it is Felicity Louviere. It stretches credibility that younger woman seduce Clete in every novel. While the age of Dave and Clete are never mentioned I believe they must be around 70 now? This story takes place in the summer of 2012. I believe Dave was born around 1942 and Clete is around Dave's age. Are we actually supposed to believe all of these women want to jump in bed with Clete?
Overall this was an enjoyable read. It wasn't the best book in the series. It wasn't the worse either. I have enjoyed the series but I hope that the author will end on a high note and not continue to drag it out. Maybe it is time for Dave and Clete to retire. Enjoy the fishing on Bayou Teche or in Montana and Banff National Park. Maybe let Alafair and Gretchen represent the good guys in the fight against all the evil in the world.
July 19, 2013
Once you understand that everyone in James Lee Burke's 20th Dave Robicheaux novel is crazy, ranging from just a little to completely barking whether on the side of justice and good or lawlessness and evil (sometimes those categories align very uneasily indeed) you can just sit back and enjoy the ride.
This time finds Dave and his pal Clete, Dave's wife Molly, Dave's grown daughter Alafair (a novelist in the book as well as in real life), and Clete's newly found illegitimate daugher, always referred to for some reason by her full name of Gretchen Horowitz who found a lucrative career as a hit-man for the Miami mob and now a budding filmmaker, in Montana visiting an old friend who holds strong environmental views.
They confront singly, jointly and in their own ways unutterable evil both of the banal multibillionaire variety and that of a serial killer who permeates the book from every direction and whose presence is announced by a foul odour clearly signifying a demonic connection. The gradual unveiling of the interconnections of these evils and their effect on Robicheaux and his family and friends is beautifully recounted in Burke's wondrous prose. A beautiful, frightening, violent and ultimately transcendent book, well worth reading.
This time finds Dave and his pal Clete, Dave's wife Molly, Dave's grown daughter Alafair (a novelist in the book as well as in real life), and Clete's newly found illegitimate daugher, always referred to for some reason by her full name of Gretchen Horowitz who found a lucrative career as a hit-man for the Miami mob and now a budding filmmaker, in Montana visiting an old friend who holds strong environmental views.
They confront singly, jointly and in their own ways unutterable evil both of the banal multibillionaire variety and that of a serial killer who permeates the book from every direction and whose presence is announced by a foul odour clearly signifying a demonic connection. The gradual unveiling of the interconnections of these evils and their effect on Robicheaux and his family and friends is beautifully recounted in Burke's wondrous prose. A beautiful, frightening, violent and ultimately transcendent book, well worth reading.
July 30, 2013
I will always be up for a new Dave Robicheaux mystery, but I was a bit disappointed in this one. One reviewer here said that everyone in these books is some degree of crazy, and I think he is right. Everyone here is too willing to rudely confront others, even Dave's daughter Alafair. It was also too long, with far too much supernatural speculation. For a family vacation, Molly was simply absent too much of the time. At one point I wondered if she had been forgotten by Burke entirely!
August 16, 2013
This is probably the most complex, darkest and longest book of the Robicheaux series. It is beautifully written, lots of great metaphors, strong and well developed characters and the line between good and bad is only defined by the amount of moral compass that they possess. The book is not for the squeamish and it may lead readers to give up on the book because of all the senseless crimes that take place in the first half of the book. If you persevere you will find that the author brings the plot together to a satisfying conclusion. I will admit that unless you are a devotee of the series, you may find the book gruesome. For those that love the series it was rewarding reading. Mr Burke goes a little overboard with the darkness. It seems a little bit gratuitous and it reminds me of the excessive use of nudity in the movies, it only appeals to the prurient side and does not add to the plot.
August 5, 2013
I'll admit that JLB is my favourite author in the whole world (followed by Lawrence Block, just in case you're interested). So it's no surprise I absolutely loved this book. Dave and Clete have their normal run in with weirdos and a despicable killer, there's lots of blood on the ground, a little humour (courtesy of Clete's one liners) and the normal quota of words I've never come across before! If I were being picky, I'd call out that I prefer the Louisiana setting of most of his Dave Robicheaux series and maybe the vigilante activities of Dave and his cohorts is a little OTT. But this is off-set by the excellent addition (much stronger here than when introduced in the previous novel in this series) of Clete's daughter Gretchen - a complex and interesting character I hope Burke makes more of in future books. Superb!
August 9, 2013
It always takes me longer to read a James Lee Burke book than it does most authors because I do not want to miss a word. I have found no one in current American literature who can match Burke's style. His imagery leaps off the page at you like bright watercolor painting. Take for example the following:
"During the summer, when I was a child, no matter how hot the weather was, there was a shower almost every afternoon after three o'clock. The southern horizon would be piled with storm clouds that resembled overripe plums, and within minutes you would feel the barometer plunge and see the oak trees become a deeper green and the light become the color of brass."
No one does it like Lee Burke and along the way he also weaves a pretty darn good mystery. His latest offering is, in my opinion, one of his best works. The plot is intricate and brings together all of my favorite Burke characters - Dave Robicheaux, Clete Purcel, Alafair Robicheaux, and the mysterious, dangerous Gretchen Horowitz pitted against one of the most evil villains you can imagine.
Even if you have never read Burke I highly recommend you pick this one up and try it. It is part of a series but newcomers will not get lost and will probably have their appetites whetted for more. That is what happened to me years ago when I picked up Creole Bell and I haven't tired or stopped reading James Lee Burke since.
"During the summer, when I was a child, no matter how hot the weather was, there was a shower almost every afternoon after three o'clock. The southern horizon would be piled with storm clouds that resembled overripe plums, and within minutes you would feel the barometer plunge and see the oak trees become a deeper green and the light become the color of brass."
No one does it like Lee Burke and along the way he also weaves a pretty darn good mystery. His latest offering is, in my opinion, one of his best works. The plot is intricate and brings together all of my favorite Burke characters - Dave Robicheaux, Clete Purcel, Alafair Robicheaux, and the mysterious, dangerous Gretchen Horowitz pitted against one of the most evil villains you can imagine.
Even if you have never read Burke I highly recommend you pick this one up and try it. It is part of a series but newcomers will not get lost and will probably have their appetites whetted for more. That is what happened to me years ago when I picked up Creole Bell and I haven't tired or stopped reading James Lee Burke since.
December 27, 2023
Sweet, sweet perfection. Burke almost always churns out an excellent new edition in this series, and he was well into his 70s when he wrote Light of the World.
This one was wild! Once again, Dave, Molly and Clete are vacationing in Montana at their good friend Albert's. Alafair is a novelist who wanted to write a True Crime novel based on Asa Surrette, a convicted serial killer who Alf suspects is guilty of more murders than he was actually pinned for. After a jailhouse interview with him goes wrong, Asa escapes. The safest place she can go is to join her dad in Montana with Gretchen Horowitz, Clete's adult daughter. Sorry Albert!
Throw in a deranged, retired rodeo cowboy named Wyatt Dixon, a plus-sized woman named Bertha who becomes his ride-or-die, father-son land barons named Love and Caspian, and Caspian's estranged and manipulative wife Felicity (whom Clete falls for, naturally), and you have the correct headcount and perfect mix of hotheaded, uninhibited good and bad guys (and women) for another outstanding novel.
I have no idea how Burke keeps getting better, but he never fails to deliver a great blend of beautiful prose, spot-on human insight, and brain melting action scenes that make you cringe and bite your nails. Here's a few examples:
God, I can't believe there's only 3 left! Up next is #21, Robicheaux.
The allure of Montana is like a commitment to a narcotic; you can never use it up or get enough of it. Its wilderness areas probably resemble the earth on the first day of creation.
This one was wild! Once again, Dave, Molly and Clete are vacationing in Montana at their good friend Albert's. Alafair is a novelist who wanted to write a True Crime novel based on Asa Surrette, a convicted serial killer who Alf suspects is guilty of more murders than he was actually pinned for. After a jailhouse interview with him goes wrong, Asa escapes. The safest place she can go is to join her dad in Montana with Gretchen Horowitz, Clete's adult daughter. Sorry Albert!
Throw in a deranged, retired rodeo cowboy named Wyatt Dixon, a plus-sized woman named Bertha who becomes his ride-or-die, father-son land barons named Love and Caspian, and Caspian's estranged and manipulative wife Felicity (whom Clete falls for, naturally), and you have the correct headcount and perfect mix of hotheaded, uninhibited good and bad guys (and women) for another outstanding novel.
I have no idea how Burke keeps getting better, but he never fails to deliver a great blend of beautiful prose, spot-on human insight, and brain melting action scenes that make you cringe and bite your nails. Here's a few examples:
The photographs of the inmates at Bergen-Belsen or Andersonville Prison or the bodies in the ditch at My Lai disturb us in a singular fashion because those instances of egregious human cruelty were committed for the most part by baptized Christians.
I guess that seems like an absurd premise until we consider the possibility that the dead are always with us, beckoning from the shade, reminding us that we’re actors in the same drama they have already lived and that they can help us with our lives if we will only let them.
At a certain age, you realize the greatest loss you can experience is a theft you perpetrate upon yourself—the waste of days given us. Is there any more piercing remorse than the realization that a person has thrown away the potential that resides in every sunrise?
God, I can't believe there's only 3 left! Up next is #21, Robicheaux.
August 4, 2013
Author Burke has been tickling my need for entertainment that also makes me wonder in large ways, for many years now. Light of the World, as others have written here, does seem to contain a satisfying, retrospective voice. In some ways it forms the crown of the entire series. For me, oddly enough, it finally informed me that all these books have really been about Clete Purcell. Dave Robichaux and family all along have provided the functions of the chorus in traditional Greek Tragedy, reminding us of how fickle and often how out of touch the gods are with their struggling children down here on earth. We're on our own, and we've got to work out the details for ourselves. Evil is real, but understanding where it comes from? That's not in our job descriptions. The one thing I was very pleased to finally read was of a fishing trip taken together where some successful fishing is actually accomplished. I will recommend this book to any readers of crime fiction, whether they are Burke fans or not. Light of the World stands on its own as important American fiction. I will look forward to whatever befalls Clete and Gretchen, Dave, Molly and Alafair, when it's time to close up the tackle boxes and head home.
August 3, 2013
Burke's twentieth Dave Robicheaux novel is tired and predictable. It seemed as if I have read it several times previously. His recently introduced new character, Gretchen Horowitz -- the contract killer with a heart of gold -- strains credibility. All the characters, Dave, Clete, Molly and Alf, have become clichés. The series is just worn-out. Maybe Dave should retire and go fishing?
July 24, 2013
The Bobbsey Twins find themselves out of the Bayou in a different landscape, Montana, recovering from their Bayou shootout featured in the previous novel Creolle Belle.
James Lee Burke yet again successfully has penned a great tale with the stuff that makes great storytelling, his great potent way with words and sentences, his great thrills, his great reflections on the human condition and the world around us, his great characters, he takes you into the deep crevices of existence with lives on the line, loved ones, kin, daughters.
A tale with memorable heroes, heroins, baddies, and one real nastier baddie, its literal and visceral, poetic and mysterious, shocking and a tragic.
The Bobbsey Twins, Sheriff Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel P.I, along with their daughters Alafair and Gretchen finds themselves with many dark days ahead and a chase against time on in search of someone they wish never existed.
James Lee Burke has pitted his likable good people against one of the most evil perpetrators to appear in fiction, maybe for Dave Robicheaux since Legion Guidry, the kind you would find in novels of Cormac McCarthy and Thomas Harris.
The story hooks you and has the right pace and momentum, be prepared to be immersed and at the edge of your seat and then find yourself back and seated evenly on your seat for a time in repose and reflection on great writing and then back at the edge of your seat again.
A must read for 2013 to hit Best of 2013 lists around the globe.
Some excepts and great insights into the world of Dave Robicheaux
CHECK OUT MY INTERVIEW WITH JAMES LEE BURKE >>>http://more2read.com/review/interview-with-james-lee-burke/
Check out these pages below many videos with the author enjoy!
Visit http://www.jamesleeburke.com/
Visit James Lee Burke talks audiobooks and narrator Will Patton
Visit 75 Years of an American Legend
Visit James Lee Burke is interviewed by Barbara Peters
Visit Grand Master James Lee Burke
Visit Bestselling authors James Lee Burke and Alafair Burke
James Lee Burke yet again successfully has penned a great tale with the stuff that makes great storytelling, his great potent way with words and sentences, his great thrills, his great reflections on the human condition and the world around us, his great characters, he takes you into the deep crevices of existence with lives on the line, loved ones, kin, daughters.
A tale with memorable heroes, heroins, baddies, and one real nastier baddie, its literal and visceral, poetic and mysterious, shocking and a tragic.
The Bobbsey Twins, Sheriff Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel P.I, along with their daughters Alafair and Gretchen finds themselves with many dark days ahead and a chase against time on in search of someone they wish never existed.
James Lee Burke has pitted his likable good people against one of the most evil perpetrators to appear in fiction, maybe for Dave Robicheaux since Legion Guidry, the kind you would find in novels of Cormac McCarthy and Thomas Harris.
The story hooks you and has the right pace and momentum, be prepared to be immersed and at the edge of your seat and then find yourself back and seated evenly on your seat for a time in repose and reflection on great writing and then back at the edge of your seat again.
A must read for 2013 to hit Best of 2013 lists around the globe.
Some excepts and great insights into the world of Dave Robicheaux
“You know what the Eleventh Commandment in New Orleans is?”
“Tell me, blimpo.”
“Don’t try to put the slide on the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide.”
“To me, this was a magical land, watched over by ancient spirits, a reminder of the admonition in Ecclesiastes that the race is not to the swift or the proud and that the earth abideth forever.”
“To dwell upon the evil that men do gives second life to their deeds and lionizes poseurs and nonentities who will never be more than historical asterisks.”
“The allure of Montana is like a commitment to a narcotic; you can never use it up or get enough of it. Its wilderness areas probably resemble the earth on the first day of creation. for me it was also a carousel, one whose song and light show never ended. The morning after Alafair’s confrontation with Wyatt Dixon, we had rain, then blowing snow inside the sunshine, then sleeting snow and rain, and sunshine again and green pastures and flowers blooming in the gardens and a rainbow that arched across the mountains. All of this before nine A.M.”
“Let me make a confession. I would like to say i became a police officer with the NOPD in order to make the world a better place. I became a cop in order to deal with a black lesion that had been growing on my brain, if not my soul, since i was a child. My parents embarked upon the worst course human beings are capable of: They destroyed their home and their family and finally themselves. If there is any greater form of loss, i do not know what it is. It stays with you every day of your life; you wake with it at dawn and carry it with you into your nocturnal hours. There is no respite or cure, and if your experience has been like mine, you have accepted that only death will separate you from the abiding sense of nothingness you wake with at the first touch of light on the horizon.
A man named Mack ruined my mother, and she helped turn my father, Big Aldous, into a sad, bewildered, raging alcoholic who once wrecked Antlers Pool Room and tore up seven Lafayette police officers with his bare fists. I had no feeling about the Vietcong or the NVA, but I put Mack's face on every enemy soldier I killed. When I came back home, 1 rented an apartment in the French Quarter and slept with a .45 under my pillow, a round in the chamber, not in fear but in hope that someone would try to break in.
Please forgive my obsession. My own story isn't important. The story of the human condition is. If you see your natal home destroyed, one of two things will happen: You will let the loss of your childhood continue to rob you of all happiness for the rest of your life, or you will build a family of your own, a good one, made up of people you truly love and in whose company you are genuinely happy. If you are unlucky, born under a dark star, violent men ferret their way into the life of your family and re-create the act of theft that ruined your childhood. From that moment on, you will enter a landscape that only people who have stacked time in the Garden of Gethsemane will understand.
You will discover that the portrayal of law enforcement on television has nothing to do with reality. Chances are, you will be on your own. Perhaps you will find out that the suspected perpetrator has been released on bail without your being notified. The detective assigned to your case might do his best, but you will sense he is drowning in his workload and not always happy to see you. Your phone calls will go unanswered. You will become a nuisance and begin to talk incessantly about your personal problems, to strangers as well as friends. When you think it's all over, you may receive a taunting call from the person who raped or murdered your loved one.
Sound like an exaggeration? Dial up someone who has been there and see what he has to say.
I remember sitting naked and ninety-proof in an Orleans Parish holding cell, flexing my hand, my body running with sweat, as I watched the veins swell in my forearm while I fantasized about a man I was going to kill as soon as I was released. The target of my anger was a Mafia boss I normally referred to as a three-hundred-pound load of whale shit whose name wasn't worth remembering. I changed my mind when one of his gumballs shot my half brother, Jimmie, in the head and blinded him in one eye. That was when I decided to get back on that old-time lock-and-load rock and roll and turn a certain Mafia boss into wallpaper. At the time I thought and did these things, I was a police officer sworn to protect and serve."
"We all agree that anyone who is cruel to animals is a moral and physical coward and undeserving of the air he breathes. This same person, however, has a way of working himself into a position of authority over others, often children, even though all the warning signs are there. I've never understood our collective unwillingness to question the authority of a predator who happens to acquire a badge or an insignia or a clerical collar or who carries a whistle on a lanyard around his neck. Without our sanction, these pitiful excuses for human beings would wither and die like amphibians gasping for oxygen and water on the surface of Mars.
The motivations of a psychopath are almost irrelevant in an investigation. Psychoanalytical speculation about a moral imbecile makes for great entertainment, but it doesn't put a net over anyone, and you do yourself no favor by trying to place yourself inside his head. The methodology of the psychopath is a different issue, one that frequently proves to be his undoing. In all probability, the perpetrator's pattern will repeat itself, primarily because he's a narcissist and thinks his method, if it has worked once, is failsafe; second, the psychopath is not interested in the hunt but, rather, in assaulting and murdering his prey, unlike a professional thief, who is usually a pragmatist and considers theft an occupation and not a personal attack upon his victim."
"I have always loved and welcomed the rain, even though sometimes the spirits of the dead visit me inside it. During the summer, when I was a child, no matter how hot the weather was, there was a shower almost every afternoon at three o'clock. The southern horizon would be piled with storm clouds that resembled overripe plums, and within minutes you would feel the barometer plunge and see the oak trees become a deeper green and the light become the color of brass. You could smell the salt in the wind and an odor that was like watermelon that had burst open on a hot sidewalk. Suddenly, the wind would shift and the oak trees would come to life, leaves swirling and Spanish moss straightening on the limbs. Just before the first rain-drops fell, Bayou Teche would be dimpled by bream rising to feed on the surface. No more than a minute later, the rain would pour down in buckets, and the surface of the Teche would dance with a hazy yellow glow that looked more like mist than rain.
For me, the rain was always a friend. I think that is true of almost all children. They seem to understand its baptismal nature, the fashion in which it absolves and cleanses and restores the earth. The most wonderful aspect of the rain was its cessation. After no longer than a half hour, the sun would come out, the air would be cool and fresh, the four o'clocks would be opening in the shade, and that evening there would be a baseball game in City Park. The rain was part of a testimony that assured us the summer was somehow eternal, that even the coming of the darkness could be held back by the heat lightning that flickered through the heavens after sunset.
The rain also brought me visitors who convinced me the dead never let go of this world. After my father. Big Aldous, died out on the salt, I would see him inside the rain, standing up to his knees in the surf, his hard hat titled sideways on his head. When he saw the alarm in my face, he would give me a thumbs-up to indicate that death wasn't a big challenge. I saw members of my platoon crossing a stream in the monsoon season, the rain bouncing on their steel pots and sliding off their ponchos, the mortal wounds they had sustained glowing as brightly as Communion wafers.
The person who contacted me most often in the rain was my murdered wife, Annie, who usually called during an electric storm to assure me she was all right, always apologizing for the heavy static on the line. Don't ever let anyone tell you this is all there is. They're lying. The dead are out there. Anyone who swears otherwise has never stayed up late in a summer storm and listened to their voices."
CHECK OUT MY INTERVIEW WITH JAMES LEE BURKE >>>http://more2read.com/review/interview-with-james-lee-burke/
Check out these pages below many videos with the author enjoy!
Visit http://www.jamesleeburke.com/
Visit James Lee Burke talks audiobooks and narrator Will Patton
Visit 75 Years of an American Legend
Visit James Lee Burke is interviewed by Barbara Peters
Visit Grand Master James Lee Burke
Visit Bestselling authors James Lee Burke and Alafair Burke
March 27, 2018
Dave Robicheaux and his side-kick Clete Purcel had been fighting (and committing) crime for 25 years before what turned out to be a busman’s holiday up in Montana in book number 20 of the series. The novel is so chock-a-block with plot and shifting narratives that Burke finds less time for philosophy/preaching than in some novels, though his familiar theme about the evils of the mega-rich, whom you will always have with you, and who abuse power and privilege while corrupting those who keep law and order still comes through just as clearly and rings just as true. Several tough, dark, hard-as-diamonds, more-or-less-mad characters show up: some may be familiar to followers of this long-running series. They were new to me, but I’d happily read more about them (e.g., Clete’s eye-pleasing, canny, resourceful, not-quite-ex hit woman daughter). Among the cast, only Dave’s second wife seemed something of a shrinking violet before eventually coming to life toward the end. The chief cause of all this trouble is an undead, devil-stinking serial killer from Kansas (“where the telephone pole is the state tree”): one of the baddest, least redeemable, evilest (but subtly drawn) bad dudes I’ve read about in a while. There is no shortage of the worst sorts of violence and brutality, though Burke seems almost classical in the discretion with which he presents it. I looked forward to picking the book up every time, after deliberately putting it down, just to show that I could.
June 25, 2013
“Light of the World” by James Lee Burke, published by Simon & Schuster.
Category – Mystery/Thriller Publication Date – July 16, 2013
What can one say that has not already been said about the writing of James Lee Burke. The author of thirty-two novels that will keep the reader on the edge of his seat wondering what is going to happen next. The level of suspense and action is seldom seen in other books of this nature, maybe once in a while but not over thirty-two novels. He is at his best when he is writing about Dave Robicheaux. “Light of the World” is twentieth novel that features him and Clete Purcel.
Dave, his wife Molly, his daughter Alafair, Clete and his daughter Gretchen are vacationing in Montana when they all become involved in murder. Asa Surrrette, whose crimes are innumerable and diabolical, has just escaped from prison and has a score to settle with Alafair.
Asa finds great pleasure in tormenting Dave and Clete by kidnapping and torturing people and at the same time letting them know that the same is in store for their daughters.
As always, the book is filled with characters both good, bad, and quirky. It is not difficult to find oneself finding a place in your heart for a run down rodeo cowboy/clown and an overweight female journalist.
The action starts early and lasts throughout the book. The reader will enjoy the continuing fight between the law and Dave and Clete as they hand out their own form of justice. They may not always be on the right side of the law, but they are always right.
The reader can always bet that they will get their money’s worth plus some when they read a Dave Robicheaux novel by James Lee Burke.
Category – Mystery/Thriller Publication Date – July 16, 2013
What can one say that has not already been said about the writing of James Lee Burke. The author of thirty-two novels that will keep the reader on the edge of his seat wondering what is going to happen next. The level of suspense and action is seldom seen in other books of this nature, maybe once in a while but not over thirty-two novels. He is at his best when he is writing about Dave Robicheaux. “Light of the World” is twentieth novel that features him and Clete Purcel.
Dave, his wife Molly, his daughter Alafair, Clete and his daughter Gretchen are vacationing in Montana when they all become involved in murder. Asa Surrrette, whose crimes are innumerable and diabolical, has just escaped from prison and has a score to settle with Alafair.
Asa finds great pleasure in tormenting Dave and Clete by kidnapping and torturing people and at the same time letting them know that the same is in store for their daughters.
As always, the book is filled with characters both good, bad, and quirky. It is not difficult to find oneself finding a place in your heart for a run down rodeo cowboy/clown and an overweight female journalist.
The action starts early and lasts throughout the book. The reader will enjoy the continuing fight between the law and Dave and Clete as they hand out their own form of justice. They may not always be on the right side of the law, but they are always right.
The reader can always bet that they will get their money’s worth plus some when they read a Dave Robicheaux novel by James Lee Burke.
July 27, 2013
I’ve been agonizing over this review for several weeks, and the question keeps popping us—what if Dave and Clete really did die in the Bayou shoot out, and are now as avenging angels, using all their power and strength to destroy some of the most appalling villains in fiction? Might that explain why they are faced continually by, and must do battle with, real evil?
Dave and Clete go on vacation, possibly just to give the people of south Louisiana a break from the badness those two seem to attract. But if you’ve read other James Lee Burke novels, Montana would seem to be a poor choice, already having been established in earlier books as riddled with wrong.
These two are so damaged, from alcohol, Vietnam, brutal jobs, loss and more, that they attract a malevolence rarely seen in fiction. I’d gone off James Lee Burke for a while (too much ruminating about alcoholism, Vietnam, hallucinations) but came back after Tin Roof Blowdown. His prose is even richer than before, and there is more of a trajectory to the action with fewer digressions for this or that. You will wonder why occasionally Dave or Clete, or even Alafair can’t just mutter “Whatever” and walk away. You may also wonder why Dave and Clete never seem to get tired, even when one of them is old, and the other one is obese and probably drunk. Another reason to consider the other-worldly possibility.
But no matter. “Light of the World” is good. Frightening, complex, compelling. After how many books? James Lee Burke just gets better.
Dave and Clete go on vacation, possibly just to give the people of south Louisiana a break from the badness those two seem to attract. But if you’ve read other James Lee Burke novels, Montana would seem to be a poor choice, already having been established in earlier books as riddled with wrong.
These two are so damaged, from alcohol, Vietnam, brutal jobs, loss and more, that they attract a malevolence rarely seen in fiction. I’d gone off James Lee Burke for a while (too much ruminating about alcoholism, Vietnam, hallucinations) but came back after Tin Roof Blowdown. His prose is even richer than before, and there is more of a trajectory to the action with fewer digressions for this or that. You will wonder why occasionally Dave or Clete, or even Alafair can’t just mutter “Whatever” and walk away. You may also wonder why Dave and Clete never seem to get tired, even when one of them is old, and the other one is obese and probably drunk. Another reason to consider the other-worldly possibility.
But no matter. “Light of the World” is good. Frightening, complex, compelling. After how many books? James Lee Burke just gets better.
April 24, 2018
I had to go to bed after finishing this book last night as it took everything out of me - like no other book I've read. This is only the second book I have read in the Dave Robicheaux series, so I do not know how often these gentlemen stray from Louisiana's bayou region, but this epic transpires in Montana, a place of musings, murder, mayhem, mysticism and everything in the cupboard.
In theory this was to be a renewing vacation with family and friends, though the good friend who invited them lives on expansive ranch land adjacent to a billionaire stooge. Every character in this adventure is carefully, colorfully alive until they aren't.
A serial killer (with his own unique odor) acquainted with Robicheaux's adopted daughter Alafair escapes a deadly, but planned highway prison van crash to impinge on the tranquility and peaceful beauty of the region.
He makes his presence known initially with an arrow, nicking Alafair's ear.
To sum it up, Man and Woman against Evil. Enough material in this one book for at least a mini series.
And then there are the beautifully described scenes of nature to feed the soul.
In theory this was to be a renewing vacation with family and friends, though the good friend who invited them lives on expansive ranch land adjacent to a billionaire stooge. Every character in this adventure is carefully, colorfully alive until they aren't.
A serial killer (with his own unique odor) acquainted with Robicheaux's adopted daughter Alafair escapes a deadly, but planned highway prison van crash to impinge on the tranquility and peaceful beauty of the region.
He makes his presence known initially with an arrow, nicking Alafair's ear.
To sum it up, Man and Woman against Evil. Enough material in this one book for at least a mini series.
And then there are the beautifully described scenes of nature to feed the soul.
July 29, 2013
James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux, the haunted, all-too-human homicide detective from the Louisiana bayou country, first appeared more than 25 years ago in “The Neon Rain.” It was apparent, even then, that Burke had given us an extraordinary character, one whose depth, complexity and evocative narrative voice was worth returning to again and again. That has turned out to be the case. “Light of the World” is the 20th installment in this increasingly ambitious series, and it reaffirms Robicheaux’s status as one of the most successfully sustained creations in contemporary crime fiction. Read the review: http://wapo.st/16vQXrT
August 2, 2013
It is unbelievable that after all the novels Burke has written, he just keeps getting better and better. This one features a road trip, with Clete, Dave and Alafair staying with a friend and then hearing that Gretchen will soon be joining them as well. A fact that Dave is more than a little worried about. With all four of them together, you just know strange things are going to happen. True evil, when someone thought to be dead more than likely is not. A fast moving, and compelling read. A must read for Burke fans.
September 4, 2013
Twentieth in the Dave Robicheaux mystery series which is usually based in Louisiana. This particular story takes place near Missoula, Montana.
My Take
Not as satisfying as it usually is and with a lot more introspection on Dave's part with most of the action between Dave and Clete with Alafair and Gretchen coming up fast. A lot of daddy-worry. There was almost no Molly until the end, even though they're on vacation together.
Burke doesn't give a good reason why Dave treats Alafair as he does. He knows better. He knows that Alafair isn't the type to cry wolf. Nor did I buy all the interference on Dave and Clete's part with the local sheriff. Sure, Bisbee comes to Dave at the start due to his own lack of experience, but I can't imagine any sheriff accepting as much mucking about as these two did, well three, with Gretchen. And the sheriff doesn't do much about it. Didn't seem as if he did much of anything about anything other than blow hot and cold on the Bobbsey Twins.
Burke goes on about Surrette, but leaves it all vague, for the blanks to be filled in later. I can understand using the tease, but this felt more like Burke just forgot to fill bits in along the way. This isn't the only vague bit either. There's Bill Pepper and his actions. Why does Bisbee even employ people like him? His successor appears to be canned before we know it. Felicity's supposed resemblance to the saint she's named for. Burke tosses this in and then props it up here and there. The whole story is like a jumble of ideas that Burke doesn't bother going anywhere with.
There's Felicity's hot-cold as she teases and entices Clete, who blunders right on in. At least this is per usual...and getting rather boring about it.
What was the point of mentioning the wolves? Why keep the identity of the family who is letting the room secret?
Bloody hell. I spent more time trying to figure out the loose ends than I did reading the story.
Oh, please. Younger is the one who pushed Gretchen to talk, then he blames her for it?
Of all people, Gretchen is the one I would never have thought would be so naive. Although, I gotta say, like father, like daughter. Neither of them will let the attack on Gretchen go.
Why is Dave so down on Wyatt? I'd'a thought he'd be one of the first to at least seriously think about spiritual stuff, what with the ghosties he's seen in the past. Burke does do a nice job of changing my mind about Wyatt. A nice slow twist.
Pretty much a repeat of Clete and Dave's histories, but we do get a good hunk of Gretchen's back history. Another reason why parents should be licensed!
What is with these people? Family members keep getting kidnapped and their only reaction is not my problem?
This one is unsatisfying, half-hearted. Too vague, too same-same, although I do like the direction Burke is going with Alafair and Gretchen. I also liked Dave's come-to-Jesus evolution about Gretchen.
The Story
It starts depressingly with a recap by Dave of his chequered career and Alafair's almost dying where the Robicheauxs and Clete are on vacation in Montana.
It's a mess with Clete and Dave a bit off center in it all as people are hurt, killed, and/or kidnapped while the sheriff can't seem to get those blinders off.
The Characters
Dave Robicheaux is a sheriff's detective in New Iberia, Louisiana, and he's married to Molly, a former nun. Dave's had a hard life complicated by alcoholism that he used to cope with his return from serving in Vietnam. Alafair Robicheaux is their adopted El Salvadoran daughter with a degree in psychology, and she was a Stanford law student with her first novel published, a second one coming out this summer, and working on the third.
Clete Purcell is a private investigator and bounty hunter for Wee Willie Bimstine and Ng Rosewater; he was Dave's partner when the two of them were the Bobbsey Twins of Homicide with the New Orleans PD. The two of 'em are notorious! Clete does everything wrong in his life, but he does mean well. He recently discovered ( Creole Belle , 19) that he has a daughter, Gretchen Horowitz, who has just graduated from film school. An upgrade from her former career as a Mob hit woman where she was known as Caruso. She had good reason. Percy Wolcott is the good-hearted pilot who helps Gretchen.
Wyatt Dixon, a rodeo man, is from Fort Davis, Texas, but he has a ranch here in Montana where he camps, yep, in the house. A stint in prison with a course of weird medications has left him a bit slow, and he has his own sense of honor. He's a religious fanatic and speaks in tongues. Wyatt is quite clever in his drawing out of Love. Bertha Phelps is a journalist.
Albert Hollister is a novelist and a retired English professor with a large house in Montana who has invited the group to spend some time. Dave may not consider him a rabble rouser, but he sure acts like one! Opal is his dead wife.
Elvis Bisbee is the sheriff in Missoula, and while he seems ineffectual, he does have a sense of honor. Bill Pepper is a detective and has some nasty issues, as does his successor Detective Jack Boyd. Bisbee needs to do some kind of character testing... Emile Schmitt is a PI and bail-skip chaser out of Fort Lauderdale and Atlantic City. Special Agent James Martini has heard of Dave.
Love Younger is an oil man and one of the ten wealthiest men in the United States. His foster granddaughter, Angel Deer Heart, has gone missing. Caspian is his entitled son while Felicity Louviere (she's from New Orleans; her dad was Rene Louviere, a former cop), well, who knows about her. She's a contradiction in so many ways. Tony Zappa and Kyle Schumacher are some of the men who work for Younger. Rosa Segovia is Kyle's soon-to-be-former girlfriend.
Asa Surrette is a convicted serial killer from Kansas whom Alafair interviewed some time back.
Reverend Geta Noonen is one of those universal kind of preachers. With an agenda. Rhonda Fayhee is a waitress at a local café. Seymour Little has a focus part. Ralph is the father and a reverend.
Philo "Whiplash" Wineberger is a bottom-of-the-barrel lawyer in New Orleans. Terry McCarthy popped up out of nowhere.
The Cover
The cover has a red canvas background with four different, horizontal arrowheads drawn in pastels, each arrow separating the author's name and the words in the title. I have no clue as to why the arrowheads as the Native American aspect to this is slight.
I'm clueless as to the inspiration of the title as well. The Light of the World could well refer to how Clete and Dave view their "little" girls.
My Take
Not as satisfying as it usually is and with a lot more introspection on Dave's part with most of the action between Dave and Clete with Alafair and Gretchen coming up fast. A lot of daddy-worry. There was almost no Molly until the end, even though they're on vacation together.
Burke doesn't give a good reason why Dave treats Alafair as he does. He knows better. He knows that Alafair isn't the type to cry wolf. Nor did I buy all the interference on Dave and Clete's part with the local sheriff. Sure, Bisbee comes to Dave at the start due to his own lack of experience, but I can't imagine any sheriff accepting as much mucking about as these two did, well three, with Gretchen. And the sheriff doesn't do much about it. Didn't seem as if he did much of anything about anything other than blow hot and cold on the Bobbsey Twins.
Burke goes on about Surrette, but leaves it all vague, for the blanks to be filled in later. I can understand using the tease, but this felt more like Burke just forgot to fill bits in along the way. This isn't the only vague bit either. There's Bill Pepper and his actions. Why does Bisbee even employ people like him? His successor appears to be canned before we know it. Felicity's supposed resemblance to the saint she's named for. Burke tosses this in and then props it up here and there. The whole story is like a jumble of ideas that Burke doesn't bother going anywhere with.
There's Felicity's hot-cold as she teases and entices Clete, who blunders right on in. At least this is per usual...and getting rather boring about it.
What was the point of mentioning the wolves? Why keep the identity of the family who is letting the room secret?
Bloody hell. I spent more time trying to figure out the loose ends than I did reading the story.
Oh, please. Younger is the one who pushed Gretchen to talk, then he blames her for it?
Of all people, Gretchen is the one I would never have thought would be so naive. Although, I gotta say, like father, like daughter. Neither of them will let the attack on Gretchen go.
Why is Dave so down on Wyatt? I'd'a thought he'd be one of the first to at least seriously think about spiritual stuff, what with the ghosties he's seen in the past. Burke does do a nice job of changing my mind about Wyatt. A nice slow twist.
Pretty much a repeat of Clete and Dave's histories, but we do get a good hunk of Gretchen's back history. Another reason why parents should be licensed!
What is with these people? Family members keep getting kidnapped and their only reaction is not my problem?
This one is unsatisfying, half-hearted. Too vague, too same-same, although I do like the direction Burke is going with Alafair and Gretchen. I also liked Dave's come-to-Jesus evolution about Gretchen.
The Story
It starts depressingly with a recap by Dave of his chequered career and Alafair's almost dying where the Robicheauxs and Clete are on vacation in Montana.
It's a mess with Clete and Dave a bit off center in it all as people are hurt, killed, and/or kidnapped while the sheriff can't seem to get those blinders off.
The Characters
Dave Robicheaux is a sheriff's detective in New Iberia, Louisiana, and he's married to Molly, a former nun. Dave's had a hard life complicated by alcoholism that he used to cope with his return from serving in Vietnam. Alafair Robicheaux is their adopted El Salvadoran daughter with a degree in psychology, and she was a Stanford law student with her first novel published, a second one coming out this summer, and working on the third.
Clete Purcell is a private investigator and bounty hunter for Wee Willie Bimstine and Ng Rosewater; he was Dave's partner when the two of them were the Bobbsey Twins of Homicide with the New Orleans PD. The two of 'em are notorious! Clete does everything wrong in his life, but he does mean well. He recently discovered ( Creole Belle , 19) that he has a daughter, Gretchen Horowitz, who has just graduated from film school. An upgrade from her former career as a Mob hit woman where she was known as Caruso. She had good reason. Percy Wolcott is the good-hearted pilot who helps Gretchen.
Wyatt Dixon, a rodeo man, is from Fort Davis, Texas, but he has a ranch here in Montana where he camps, yep, in the house. A stint in prison with a course of weird medications has left him a bit slow, and he has his own sense of honor. He's a religious fanatic and speaks in tongues. Wyatt is quite clever in his drawing out of Love. Bertha Phelps is a journalist.
Albert Hollister is a novelist and a retired English professor with a large house in Montana who has invited the group to spend some time. Dave may not consider him a rabble rouser, but he sure acts like one! Opal is his dead wife.
Elvis Bisbee is the sheriff in Missoula, and while he seems ineffectual, he does have a sense of honor. Bill Pepper is a detective and has some nasty issues, as does his successor Detective Jack Boyd. Bisbee needs to do some kind of character testing... Emile Schmitt is a PI and bail-skip chaser out of Fort Lauderdale and Atlantic City. Special Agent James Martini has heard of Dave.
Love Younger is an oil man and one of the ten wealthiest men in the United States. His foster granddaughter, Angel Deer Heart, has gone missing. Caspian is his entitled son while Felicity Louviere (she's from New Orleans; her dad was Rene Louviere, a former cop), well, who knows about her. She's a contradiction in so many ways. Tony Zappa and Kyle Schumacher are some of the men who work for Younger. Rosa Segovia is Kyle's soon-to-be-former girlfriend.
Asa Surrette is a convicted serial killer from Kansas whom Alafair interviewed some time back.
Reverend Geta Noonen is one of those universal kind of preachers. With an agenda. Rhonda Fayhee is a waitress at a local café. Seymour Little has a focus part. Ralph is the father and a reverend.
Philo "Whiplash" Wineberger is a bottom-of-the-barrel lawyer in New Orleans. Terry McCarthy popped up out of nowhere.
The Cover
The cover has a red canvas background with four different, horizontal arrowheads drawn in pastels, each arrow separating the author's name and the words in the title. I have no clue as to why the arrowheads as the Native American aspect to this is slight.
I'm clueless as to the inspiration of the title as well. The Light of the World could well refer to how Clete and Dave view their "little" girls.
October 25, 2013
Light of the World by James Lee Burke
560 pages
Simon & Schuster
July 23, 2013)
ISBN-10: 1476710767
ISBN-13: 978-1476710761
Publicist: rebecca.marsh@simonandschuster.com
Reviewer: D. P. Lyle
“...the characters rise to haunt you long after you read the final page.”
Full disclosure here: I’m a fanatic James Lee Burke fan so am biased toward anything he writes. I’ve followed his tales of Louisiana bayou homicide detective Dave Robicheaux from The Neon Rain to the latest and 20th installment in the series Light Of The World. Each book is a lesson in literary crime writing but LOTW is one of the best.
The theme of this story is evil. Pure unadulterated evil. Does it exist as a tangible object? A living, breathing entity? Is it buried deeply in each of us? Does it dwell in the hearts of some more than others? Light Of The World is a story of revenge, violence, corruption, and ultimately how one copes with the presence of raw evil in human form.
Or as Dave says:
I was never good at solving mysteries. I don’t mean the kind cops solve or the ones you read about in novels or watch on television or on a movie screen. I’m not talking about the mystery of Creation, either, or the unseen presences that reside perhaps just the other side of the physical world. I’m talking about evil, without capitalization but evil all the same, the kind whose origins sociologists and psychiatrists have trouble explaining.
Thus begins Light Of The World.
Dave, along with wife Molly and lawyer/novelist daughter Alafair, as well as former partner Clete Purcel, travel to the wilds near Missoula, Montana for a little R and R. All is well until an arrow flies from nowhere and nearly kills Alafair while she is on a mountain jog. To Dave, the most likely suspect is Wyatt Dixon, an ex rodeo champion and felon, who reprises from Bitterroot (2001) but other suspects quickly jump up on Dave’s radar. One, the sexual sadist and convicted serial killer Asa Surrette, who apparently died in an explosive prison transport van crash. Or did he? Could he have survived? Somehow escaped from the mangled, charred vehicle? Alafair has no doubts. She has seen his face, in town, following her. Dave isn’t convinced. Could Surrette not only be alive but be hell-bent on exacting revenge against Alafair, for whom he holds a deep-seated hatred after she wrote a series of articles blaming him for other crimes? Can Dave protect her from such a relentless force?
Perhaps the most interesting character in the story is Gretchen Horowitz, Clete’s estranged daughter, introduced in Creole Belle (2012). A former contract killer for mob types, she is now reinventing herself as a documentary film maker. A fascinating and deep character with a history, she enters the fray in a no-brakes, in-your-face fashion. Smart, tough, and relentless, she employs her own brand of violence to protect herself, and Alafair.
This story is written in James Lee Burke’s usual style. Richly poetic writing mixed with down and dirty storytelling. The setting comes alive, the story drags you along at a breathless pace, and the characters rise to haunt you long after you read the final page. Classic JLB.
DP Lyle, award-winning author of the Dub Walker and Samantha Cody thriller series
560 pages
Simon & Schuster
July 23, 2013)
ISBN-10: 1476710767
ISBN-13: 978-1476710761
Publicist: rebecca.marsh@simonandschuster.com
Reviewer: D. P. Lyle
“...the characters rise to haunt you long after you read the final page.”
Full disclosure here: I’m a fanatic James Lee Burke fan so am biased toward anything he writes. I’ve followed his tales of Louisiana bayou homicide detective Dave Robicheaux from The Neon Rain to the latest and 20th installment in the series Light Of The World. Each book is a lesson in literary crime writing but LOTW is one of the best.
The theme of this story is evil. Pure unadulterated evil. Does it exist as a tangible object? A living, breathing entity? Is it buried deeply in each of us? Does it dwell in the hearts of some more than others? Light Of The World is a story of revenge, violence, corruption, and ultimately how one copes with the presence of raw evil in human form.
Or as Dave says:
I was never good at solving mysteries. I don’t mean the kind cops solve or the ones you read about in novels or watch on television or on a movie screen. I’m not talking about the mystery of Creation, either, or the unseen presences that reside perhaps just the other side of the physical world. I’m talking about evil, without capitalization but evil all the same, the kind whose origins sociologists and psychiatrists have trouble explaining.
Thus begins Light Of The World.
Dave, along with wife Molly and lawyer/novelist daughter Alafair, as well as former partner Clete Purcel, travel to the wilds near Missoula, Montana for a little R and R. All is well until an arrow flies from nowhere and nearly kills Alafair while she is on a mountain jog. To Dave, the most likely suspect is Wyatt Dixon, an ex rodeo champion and felon, who reprises from Bitterroot (2001) but other suspects quickly jump up on Dave’s radar. One, the sexual sadist and convicted serial killer Asa Surrette, who apparently died in an explosive prison transport van crash. Or did he? Could he have survived? Somehow escaped from the mangled, charred vehicle? Alafair has no doubts. She has seen his face, in town, following her. Dave isn’t convinced. Could Surrette not only be alive but be hell-bent on exacting revenge against Alafair, for whom he holds a deep-seated hatred after she wrote a series of articles blaming him for other crimes? Can Dave protect her from such a relentless force?
Perhaps the most interesting character in the story is Gretchen Horowitz, Clete’s estranged daughter, introduced in Creole Belle (2012). A former contract killer for mob types, she is now reinventing herself as a documentary film maker. A fascinating and deep character with a history, she enters the fray in a no-brakes, in-your-face fashion. Smart, tough, and relentless, she employs her own brand of violence to protect herself, and Alafair.
This story is written in James Lee Burke’s usual style. Richly poetic writing mixed with down and dirty storytelling. The setting comes alive, the story drags you along at a breathless pace, and the characters rise to haunt you long after you read the final page. Classic JLB.
DP Lyle, award-winning author of the Dub Walker and Samantha Cody thriller series
March 16, 2024
It’s been much too long since I’ve read a JLB novel, time for a reunion with Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcell. The setting is in Montana instead of Louisiana for this novel. These guys served in Vietnam together. The writing is poetic as usual, the evil is alive and well, there’s just enough humor and Alafair and Gretchen are grown and battling with their dads. What a rush, this was a wild ride, different than previous books. Burke gets better with age. I have four books to read to catch this series up and I plan to do exactly that. Ready to head back to the bayou. Action packed psychological, mystery, thriller!
August 15, 2014
I read my first James Lee Burke book in 1990, it was The Neon Rain, I bought the paperback for the title, and I loved the main Character Dave Robicheaux. After reading the book I read the next two books in the series, and from then on I read everything that James Lee Burke wrote. I would buy his books the day they came out even though they were hardback and expensive and knowing if i waited a week or two they would go on sale. I didn't care, I couldn't wait to read them. Like all book series, some were better than others but even the not so great ones were better than many other books out there. The series should have ended with "The Glass Rainbow", even though I would be sad that the series was over, the main characters Dave and Clete were becoming, cliched, predictable and tiring. Let's face it these two should be dead, after all of their crazy antics or at the least in jail or retired and playing shuffleboard in Florida.
The series was in trouble as all series are when he started adding additional characters to the story. His wife Molly who was some liberal do-gooder Nun in El Salvador, so she gets a pass for anything she helps Dave with, and then there was the the making of Dave's daughter Alafair more prominent in the stories. A daughter with the same name that the author has in real life.To really "Jump The Shark" the author added a daughter for Clete named Gretchen whose background was supposed to, I guess elicit sympathy but was just cliched and laughable.
The other problem with this series and other series from Mr Burke, were that his politics and beliefs went from being a small part of the story, to instead being front and center. The author is free to have whatever political views he wants but to ruin a fictional book series to make his point is disastrous. We all know he is Liberal, hates Republicans and especially Bush who we blames for everything including New Orleans lack of planning for Hurricane Katrina. The BP disaster was another example of big business screwing over the little guy, in fact he really hates oil companies, and Logging companies too. He doesn't however see a problem with Dave and Clete repeatedly taken the law into their own hands and administering justice the way they see fit. Like many other Liberals he also doesn't seem to mind making money for himself, as he is doing something good and noble because he writes books as opposed to raping the land and fouling the water. It must be nice to hang out at one of your two homes Mr Burke and and make pronouncements about the rest of the world.
I must confess I did not read the last book in this series Creole Belle, because based on actual reader reviews it did not sound like I would like it, and I thought I would seek it out in paperback sometime down the road. That has yet to happen.
So it was with major wariness I decided to buy Light of the World, as I had some time to kill at the airport recently.
The writing is like James Lee Burke, there are parts that lyrical almost poetic, but it has all been done before and better by this author. There were times I wondered if Mr Burke even actually wrote this book of if someone who was very familiar with his style (his daughter maybe) actually contributed or fully wrote it. I mean who talks like Dave in the 21st century? In this book the storyline is all over the place, there are descriptions that seem to be used to fill up pages rather than adding anything to the story. His political views started showing up as early as on page 24 of the paperback version and the story continued downhill from there.
If you have read this book and it was your first or second in this series, and you liked it, go back to the books in the beginning before the Author was a cranky preachy old Liberal. The series used to be the benchmark of writing and storytelling, the descriptions made you feel as if you were there experiencing what Dave was, as it was happening. The action portions make sense and the story lines made sense.
I saw where Mr Burkes latest Book is not really part of any of his current series though the are a character or two from one of his series, in it. I doubt I will read it. This author unfortunately for me just is not worth the time anymore.
The series was in trouble as all series are when he started adding additional characters to the story. His wife Molly who was some liberal do-gooder Nun in El Salvador, so she gets a pass for anything she helps Dave with, and then there was the the making of Dave's daughter Alafair more prominent in the stories. A daughter with the same name that the author has in real life.To really "Jump The Shark" the author added a daughter for Clete named Gretchen whose background was supposed to, I guess elicit sympathy but was just cliched and laughable.
The other problem with this series and other series from Mr Burke, were that his politics and beliefs went from being a small part of the story, to instead being front and center. The author is free to have whatever political views he wants but to ruin a fictional book series to make his point is disastrous. We all know he is Liberal, hates Republicans and especially Bush who we blames for everything including New Orleans lack of planning for Hurricane Katrina. The BP disaster was another example of big business screwing over the little guy, in fact he really hates oil companies, and Logging companies too. He doesn't however see a problem with Dave and Clete repeatedly taken the law into their own hands and administering justice the way they see fit. Like many other Liberals he also doesn't seem to mind making money for himself, as he is doing something good and noble because he writes books as opposed to raping the land and fouling the water. It must be nice to hang out at one of your two homes Mr Burke and and make pronouncements about the rest of the world.
I must confess I did not read the last book in this series Creole Belle, because based on actual reader reviews it did not sound like I would like it, and I thought I would seek it out in paperback sometime down the road. That has yet to happen.
So it was with major wariness I decided to buy Light of the World, as I had some time to kill at the airport recently.
The writing is like James Lee Burke, there are parts that lyrical almost poetic, but it has all been done before and better by this author. There were times I wondered if Mr Burke even actually wrote this book of if someone who was very familiar with his style (his daughter maybe) actually contributed or fully wrote it. I mean who talks like Dave in the 21st century? In this book the storyline is all over the place, there are descriptions that seem to be used to fill up pages rather than adding anything to the story. His political views started showing up as early as on page 24 of the paperback version and the story continued downhill from there.
If you have read this book and it was your first or second in this series, and you liked it, go back to the books in the beginning before the Author was a cranky preachy old Liberal. The series used to be the benchmark of writing and storytelling, the descriptions made you feel as if you were there experiencing what Dave was, as it was happening. The action portions make sense and the story lines made sense.
I saw where Mr Burkes latest Book is not really part of any of his current series though the are a character or two from one of his series, in it. I doubt I will read it. This author unfortunately for me just is not worth the time anymore.
September 2, 2013
Why do I keep buying James Lee Burke novels? I should know better. The plots are now so repetitive! Basic plot line: There is one or more bad guys. Someone is murdered, horribly. Dave drives over to where One or More Bad Guy's staying and confronts him. He says the modern equivalent of "You are a churl, sir!" Then Clete drives over and confronts him too. There is much driving over to someone's house and saying dire things. Then they just bust up the guy, novel over.
In this one, everyone is together in Montana (Dave, wife Molly, daughter Alafair and Clete, and Clete's Girl-With-The-Dragon-Tattoo daughter Gretchen). We see Molly about twice in the whole novel. We hear way too much about people being abused as children. There are sightings of a Bad Guy supposedly dead (and we never hear how he escaped certain death), and no one thinks until the very end of checking the surrounding farmhouses to see if maybe he's staying in the area. Which he is. Bad Guy kills several people before the cops seem to take any notice. Then the cops, who hate Dave (all authority figures hate Dave, because he's so rogue) invite him along on every call-out to a murder scene, and Dave always brings Clete.
Other characters are introduced so that they, too, can drive over to various houses and say dire things.
Hints of Bad Guy being way too evil for anyone born human are given out, but this territory has been too well covered by John Connelly's Charlie Parker series.
Burke is so good at using the landscape; he's a genius at description and evocation of place. He is almost as identified with Louisiana as Carl Hiaasen is with Florida. And he almost makes this book worth it, with his depictions of the Montana mountains and meadows. But it feels half-hearted, with a wolf thrown in here, and a bear cub there, just to give artistic verisimiltude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
In this one, everyone is together in Montana (Dave, wife Molly, daughter Alafair and Clete, and Clete's Girl-With-The-Dragon-Tattoo daughter Gretchen). We see Molly about twice in the whole novel. We hear way too much about people being abused as children. There are sightings of a Bad Guy supposedly dead (and we never hear how he escaped certain death), and no one thinks until the very end of checking the surrounding farmhouses to see if maybe he's staying in the area. Which he is. Bad Guy kills several people before the cops seem to take any notice. Then the cops, who hate Dave (all authority figures hate Dave, because he's so rogue) invite him along on every call-out to a murder scene, and Dave always brings Clete.
Other characters are introduced so that they, too, can drive over to various houses and say dire things.
Hints of Bad Guy being way too evil for anyone born human are given out, but this territory has been too well covered by John Connelly's Charlie Parker series.
Burke is so good at using the landscape; he's a genius at description and evocation of place. He is almost as identified with Louisiana as Carl Hiaasen is with Florida. And he almost makes this book worth it, with his depictions of the Montana mountains and meadows. But it feels half-hearted, with a wolf thrown in here, and a bear cub there, just to give artistic verisimiltude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
August 25, 2013
I didn't think it was possible that I would ever give James Lee Burke a meager 3 stars. He is the master. His writing is off the charts. Unfortunately, his plot for this one bothered me in many ways. It was set in Montana--but, this time, that wasn't a plus. He had all the characters there but some of them got short shrift. I never did figure out his relationship with his host. Frankly, Albert could have been touring Europe and left Dave the key (as well as permission to use anything on the premises). Albert had an early connection to the ultimate bad guy but I'm not sure he was worth the space. Burke wanted to reflect on evil and he gave us many degrees of it from which to choose. Pretty much everyone was internally demon ridden. The book was very dark but its unrelenting focus became almost monotonous. It would have worked better for me if there were some brighter spots to bring contrast. His choice for the embodiment of evil didn't repulse me sufficiently. Possibly I've read and seen too much of similar characters. He did assign a particularly gross characteristic to this person and that really took hold of me. I almost experienced it as real and will have trouble forgetting about it. I'm ready for NOLA.
September 18, 2013
Ah Dave, Dave, usually I give you five stars for keeping me on the edge of my chair but this time . . . I almost got the feeling that some of the sections were cut and pasted from prior novels. Let's see, if you and Clete were in the VietNam war, you must be in your late sixties by now . . . and worn out from all your drinking and carousing, bad women and worse men. While I love your hatred of corruption and the big businesses behind some of the worst crimes, I think it's time we reined it back a little, don't you? Let Clete have this girl for good, let Gretchen and Alafair have some space to become the women they were created to be, and Dave, you and Clete go out and do a little fishing. Maybe take a trip to Alaska. Kick back a little, have yourselves a good time, you've earned it.
The book was OK, certainly not the best but still a gripping read. I down rated it one star for predictability.
The book was OK, certainly not the best but still a gripping read. I down rated it one star for predictability.
August 2, 2013
I've read all of Burke's books, and prefer the books set in New Orleans. This one features his usual characters, including Dave and Alafair, but it's set in Montana.
Burke is one of the few writers that hasn't lost his edge as he ages...he's over seventy, and once again, a poetic master piece. Burke's strength is his ability to evoke pictures in readers minds, it's very sense oriented. Again, the dark, flawed characters and their struggles are front and center.
IMO, Burke's not a master of the plot. As with most of his other books, there's a rambling kind of chaos to the plot lines, which is really not a major drawback because each sentence is like a little bit of poetry.
For those who have followed the series, be prepared for a very grown up Alafair, as an active "combattant".
I always fear Burke will retire, but no signs here. If you are a fiction writer, btw, a great book to study to see how he writes both the dialogue and the evocative descriptions.
Burke is one of the few writers that hasn't lost his edge as he ages...he's over seventy, and once again, a poetic master piece. Burke's strength is his ability to evoke pictures in readers minds, it's very sense oriented. Again, the dark, flawed characters and their struggles are front and center.
IMO, Burke's not a master of the plot. As with most of his other books, there's a rambling kind of chaos to the plot lines, which is really not a major drawback because each sentence is like a little bit of poetry.
For those who have followed the series, be prepared for a very grown up Alafair, as an active "combattant".
I always fear Burke will retire, but no signs here. If you are a fiction writer, btw, a great book to study to see how he writes both the dialogue and the evocative descriptions.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 864 reviews