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Dave Robicheaux #8
Burning Angel
Defending an African-American farm family from local mobsters who want their land, Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux travels from his native New Orleans to Central America in pursuit of a notorious gambler and hit man.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
795 people are currently reading
1969 people want to read
About the author
James Lee Burke
119 books4,155 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 315 reviews
October 19, 2023
This man knows how to write a book.
July 28, 2014
Book Review
Burning Angel, for me, didn't quite meet up to expectations in terms of story line. The ending does not address certain questions raised in the mind of the reader as the story progresses. In this, the 8th in the series, I also felt like the thing that I love about these Robicheaux books - the glorious, descriptive passages as can only be seen through the eyes of James Lee Burke and normally nicely balanced alongside a strong plot line - seemed to overwhelm the story so that the descriptions began to feel repetitive in the absence of a strong plot. Therefore the 3 star rating.
The dawn was grey and there were strips of mist in the oak and pecan trees. The sun was still below the treeline in the swamp, and the trunks on the far side of the bayou were wet and black in the gloom. You could smell the fecund odor of bluegill and sun perch spawning back in the bays.
Having said that, this is but part of a series and I suppose allowances can be made if one instance of this series concentrates more on characterization than it does plot. Burning Angel presents us with a feast of complicated character motivations swirling in a tornado of Robicheaux's feelings of loyalty and guilt. Vietnam lives inside Dave like a parasite rearing its ugly head at the most unfortunate of times and is made explicit in the return of some rather unsavory war buddies to New Iberia; guilt ravages Robicheaux's soul as he sadly ponders the plight of black homesteaders and realizes "How well we've taught them." Here, Batist, an illiterate black man, has a little tete-a-tete with Dave as to an unwelcome black visitor at the boat shed in back of Dave's property.
[Batist] used a half-mooned Clorox bottle to scoop the ashes out of the split oil barrel that we used for a barbecue pit. I waited for him to continue.
"What was his name?" I said. "What kind of car did he drive?"
"He didn't have no car, and I ain't ax him his name."
"Where'd he go?"
"Wherever people go when you run them down the road with a two-by-fo."
"Batist, I don't think it's a good idea to treat people like that."
"One like that always work for the white man, Dave."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Everyt'ing he do make white people believe the rest of us ain't got the right to ax for mo' than we got."
Burke raises the question of charity, not as a means of helping others, but as a means to assuaging one's own guilt.
But as I watched her walk with labored dignity toward her car in the parking lot, I wondered if I, too, had yielded to that old white pretense of impatient charity with people of color, as though somehow they were incapable of understanding our efforts on their behalf.
Fusing together a string of events that involve the mob, Vietnam war buddies, police officers, his family and black homesteaders Dave Robicheaux attempts to balance his personal life with his failing career in the New Iberia police department - all while searching for answers in several killings (historical and present day) and the mysterious purchase of land by a nefarious corporation, land that for generations has been populated by black homesteaders.
Clete, his former detective colleague turned legit PI, returns to stand by Dave in all matters. Clete, a man not averse to violence, was created by Burke to be Robicheaux's tempered conscience when guilt and anger force their way into Dave's psyche. For Clete, the need to protect his friend's affinity for compassion, even at the cost of Clete's own well-being, is paramount throughout this series. Clete knows he has a bad streak in him, that he is in many ways the stronger of the two, and his struggle to prevent Dave from being defeated in the same battle that has already been lost by Clete is fierce and a testament to his loyalty.
He smiled. His face was round and pink, his green eyes lighted with a private sense of humor. A scar ran through part of his eyebrow and across the bridge of his nose, where he had been bashed witha pipe when he was a kid in the Irish Channel.
"Dave, I know what my old Homicide podjo is going to think before he thinks it."
We are introduced to Helen, a police colleague in the department. At first not very likable but as Burke explores her life Dave begins to understand her motivations and forgiving as always, an unlikely friendship develops between the two colleagues.
Bootsie and Alafaire (Dave's wife and his adopted daughter, now 14 years old) form the last leg on which loyalty stands. They are at the core of Dave's life and show they are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to protect Robicheaux. Bootsie, a former mob princess, and Alafaire, a Salvadorian refugee nearly killed in a plane crash before Dave rescued her, form the triumvirate around which the novels revolve. All readers know that were this trio to fall to harm, Dave Robicheaux would never forgive himself. He would destroy himself. Clete knows it. Bootsie knows it. Alafaire knows it (she requests training on how to handle a gun). And, a former Vietnam buddy who surfaces in this novel. He knows it too. The Robicheaux property is like a revolving door through which protectors come and go, always watching Dave's back. Hades, is not just a river.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Series Review
James Lee Burke was born in Houston, Texas, in 1936 and grew up on the Texas-Louisiana gulf coast. He attended Southwestern Louisiana Institute and later received a B. A. Degree in English and an M. A. from the University of Missouri in 1958 and 1960 respectively. Over the years he worked as a landman for Sinclair Oil Company, pipeliner, land surveyor, newspaper reporter, college English professor, social worker on Skid Row in Los Angeles, clerk for the Louisiana Employment Service, and instructor in the U. S. Job Corps.
He and his wife Pearl met in graduate school and have been married 48 years, they have four children: Jim Jr., an assistant U.S. Attorney; Andree, a school psychologist; Pamala, a T. V. ad producer; and Alafair, a law professor and novelist who has 4 novels out with Henry Holt publishing.
His short stories have been published in The Atlantic Monthly, New Stories from the South, Best American Short Stories, Antioch Review, Southern Review, and The Kenyon Review. And, in case you're a write and often get discouraged, listen to Burke when he says: "My advice is to never lose faith in one's gift and to never quit. An artist must ignore the naysayers and not be discouraged by rejection and never, under any circumstances, give up submitting one's work." His novel The Lost Get-Back Boogie was rejected 111 times over a period of nine years, and upon publication by Louisiana State University press was nominated.
Has he won any awards?
In 1988 James Lee Burke Burke was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in Fiction. [1]. Burke received the 2002 Louisiana Writer Award for his enduring contribution to the "literary intellectual heritage of Louisiana." The award was presented to him by then Lt. Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, on November 2, 2002, at a ceremony held at the inaugural Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge, LA. James Lee Burke has been recognized three times by the Mystery Writers of America (MWA). The MWA awarded its Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel of the year in 1990 for Black Cherry Blues. In 1998 the MWA again awarded its "Edgar" for Best Novel of the year for Burke's Cimarron Rose. Then in 2009 James Lee Burke received the MWA's Grand Master Award. It is rare for a mystery novelist to win both an "Edgar" [Edgar Allen Poe] Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Which of JLB's books have been made into movies?
TWO FOR TEXAS starring Kris Kristofferson and Tom Skerrit was produced by TNT. HEAVEN'S PRISONERS starred Alec Baldwin, Terri Hatcher, Kelly Lynch, Eric Roberts and Mary Stuart Masterson. IN THE ELECTRIC MIST WITH CONFEDERATE DEAD, starring Tommy Lee Jones, John Goodman and Mary Steenburgen.
What else is on the horizon for the Dave Robicheaux series?
After two so-so attempts to adapt James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux terrific mystery novel series into features, the New Orleans-based crime saga is being redrawn for cable TV. Fox-based producer Hutch Parker has optioned Burke’s books and is packaging the series. After how well FX and Graham Yost did with Elmore Leonard’s U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens character in the series Justified, cable sounds like just the place for Robicheaux if you're still a believer in cable (personally, I think cable is so 20th century and I would guess it won't be around in ten years given Netflix and Hulu's move as of late into developing their own exclusive series. I've been seriously considering shutting down cable.
Primarily known for his Dave Robicheaux series (with his Billy Bob Holland series rapidly catching up), Burke is known for marrying literature with crime-fiction while simultaneously standing at the forefront of crime-fiction authors with his second-to-none character development across a series. In case you haven't noticed, there's a marked increase in "regional" crime fiction of which Burke is a pioneer (for example: the Cork O'Connor series set in Minnesota, or the Walt Longmire series set in Wyoming). In this series, Burke exposes America to Louisiana and specifically to New Orleans and New Iberia. Having traveled quite a bit both within the United States as well as outside of it, it is my opinion that Louisiana is one of those states that most resembles a foreign country. Its French ancestry, its Napoleonic law, its parishes, and its Creole and Cajun population infuse this series with a decidedly exotic slant, a perspective that is really driven home when one listens to a competent audio book reading (preferably read by Mark Hammer).
Every novel in this series delves into moral uncertainty, the menace of uncontrolled human behavior, greed and sloth and violence all delivered via a careful juxtaposition of Louisiana's coastal natural beautfy and its dark underbelly. If that were all there is to this series, it would be a fabulous read. But, Burke doesn't stop there. His novels are a study into the deep recesses of love and loyalty; Of family and compassion and in this sense his resembles the work of William Kent Krueger who explores a similar vein in his crime series featuring Sherriff Cork O'Connor. It is James Lee Burke who stands out as one of the true pioneers in American crime-fiction (much as his counterparts do by rote in Scandinavia) by seriving up a devastating expose of the sociopolitical issues that exist in our nation today, and more specifically within the region for which he writes.
Unlike Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire series, who delivers a hero rather than an anti-hero (to the delight of his romantic literature fans), Burke has engaged the help of a decidedly flawed anti-hero, Dave Robicheaux, to accomplish his mission on earth. It is a calculated move that allows his readers to experience a harrowing journey through the former Napoleonic waters of New Iberia and New Orleans. You will not be disappointed and if you're like me (New Orleans and its French Quarter is a former home of mine), you will find yourself willfully putting the book down...not because the book's no good, but because it's so good you will want to savor every moment.
Burning Angel, for me, didn't quite meet up to expectations in terms of story line. The ending does not address certain questions raised in the mind of the reader as the story progresses. In this, the 8th in the series, I also felt like the thing that I love about these Robicheaux books - the glorious, descriptive passages as can only be seen through the eyes of James Lee Burke and normally nicely balanced alongside a strong plot line - seemed to overwhelm the story so that the descriptions began to feel repetitive in the absence of a strong plot. Therefore the 3 star rating.
The dawn was grey and there were strips of mist in the oak and pecan trees. The sun was still below the treeline in the swamp, and the trunks on the far side of the bayou were wet and black in the gloom. You could smell the fecund odor of bluegill and sun perch spawning back in the bays.
Having said that, this is but part of a series and I suppose allowances can be made if one instance of this series concentrates more on characterization than it does plot. Burning Angel presents us with a feast of complicated character motivations swirling in a tornado of Robicheaux's feelings of loyalty and guilt. Vietnam lives inside Dave like a parasite rearing its ugly head at the most unfortunate of times and is made explicit in the return of some rather unsavory war buddies to New Iberia; guilt ravages Robicheaux's soul as he sadly ponders the plight of black homesteaders and realizes "How well we've taught them." Here, Batist, an illiterate black man, has a little tete-a-tete with Dave as to an unwelcome black visitor at the boat shed in back of Dave's property.
[Batist] used a half-mooned Clorox bottle to scoop the ashes out of the split oil barrel that we used for a barbecue pit. I waited for him to continue.
"What was his name?" I said. "What kind of car did he drive?"
"He didn't have no car, and I ain't ax him his name."
"Where'd he go?"
"Wherever people go when you run them down the road with a two-by-fo."
"Batist, I don't think it's a good idea to treat people like that."
"One like that always work for the white man, Dave."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Everyt'ing he do make white people believe the rest of us ain't got the right to ax for mo' than we got."
Burke raises the question of charity, not as a means of helping others, but as a means to assuaging one's own guilt.
But as I watched her walk with labored dignity toward her car in the parking lot, I wondered if I, too, had yielded to that old white pretense of impatient charity with people of color, as though somehow they were incapable of understanding our efforts on their behalf.
Fusing together a string of events that involve the mob, Vietnam war buddies, police officers, his family and black homesteaders Dave Robicheaux attempts to balance his personal life with his failing career in the New Iberia police department - all while searching for answers in several killings (historical and present day) and the mysterious purchase of land by a nefarious corporation, land that for generations has been populated by black homesteaders.
Clete, his former detective colleague turned legit PI, returns to stand by Dave in all matters. Clete, a man not averse to violence, was created by Burke to be Robicheaux's tempered conscience when guilt and anger force their way into Dave's psyche. For Clete, the need to protect his friend's affinity for compassion, even at the cost of Clete's own well-being, is paramount throughout this series. Clete knows he has a bad streak in him, that he is in many ways the stronger of the two, and his struggle to prevent Dave from being defeated in the same battle that has already been lost by Clete is fierce and a testament to his loyalty.
He smiled. His face was round and pink, his green eyes lighted with a private sense of humor. A scar ran through part of his eyebrow and across the bridge of his nose, where he had been bashed witha pipe when he was a kid in the Irish Channel.
"Dave, I know what my old Homicide podjo is going to think before he thinks it."
We are introduced to Helen, a police colleague in the department. At first not very likable but as Burke explores her life Dave begins to understand her motivations and forgiving as always, an unlikely friendship develops between the two colleagues.
Bootsie and Alafaire (Dave's wife and his adopted daughter, now 14 years old) form the last leg on which loyalty stands. They are at the core of Dave's life and show they are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to protect Robicheaux. Bootsie, a former mob princess, and Alafaire, a Salvadorian refugee nearly killed in a plane crash before Dave rescued her, form the triumvirate around which the novels revolve. All readers know that were this trio to fall to harm, Dave Robicheaux would never forgive himself. He would destroy himself. Clete knows it. Bootsie knows it. Alafaire knows it (she requests training on how to handle a gun). And, a former Vietnam buddy who surfaces in this novel. He knows it too. The Robicheaux property is like a revolving door through which protectors come and go, always watching Dave's back. Hades, is not just a river.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Series Review
James Lee Burke was born in Houston, Texas, in 1936 and grew up on the Texas-Louisiana gulf coast. He attended Southwestern Louisiana Institute and later received a B. A. Degree in English and an M. A. from the University of Missouri in 1958 and 1960 respectively. Over the years he worked as a landman for Sinclair Oil Company, pipeliner, land surveyor, newspaper reporter, college English professor, social worker on Skid Row in Los Angeles, clerk for the Louisiana Employment Service, and instructor in the U. S. Job Corps.
He and his wife Pearl met in graduate school and have been married 48 years, they have four children: Jim Jr., an assistant U.S. Attorney; Andree, a school psychologist; Pamala, a T. V. ad producer; and Alafair, a law professor and novelist who has 4 novels out with Henry Holt publishing.
His short stories have been published in The Atlantic Monthly, New Stories from the South, Best American Short Stories, Antioch Review, Southern Review, and The Kenyon Review. And, in case you're a write and often get discouraged, listen to Burke when he says: "My advice is to never lose faith in one's gift and to never quit. An artist must ignore the naysayers and not be discouraged by rejection and never, under any circumstances, give up submitting one's work." His novel The Lost Get-Back Boogie was rejected 111 times over a period of nine years, and upon publication by Louisiana State University press was nominated.
Has he won any awards?
In 1988 James Lee Burke Burke was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in Fiction. [1]. Burke received the 2002 Louisiana Writer Award for his enduring contribution to the "literary intellectual heritage of Louisiana." The award was presented to him by then Lt. Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, on November 2, 2002, at a ceremony held at the inaugural Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge, LA. James Lee Burke has been recognized three times by the Mystery Writers of America (MWA). The MWA awarded its Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel of the year in 1990 for Black Cherry Blues. In 1998 the MWA again awarded its "Edgar" for Best Novel of the year for Burke's Cimarron Rose. Then in 2009 James Lee Burke received the MWA's Grand Master Award. It is rare for a mystery novelist to win both an "Edgar" [Edgar Allen Poe] Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Which of JLB's books have been made into movies?
TWO FOR TEXAS starring Kris Kristofferson and Tom Skerrit was produced by TNT. HEAVEN'S PRISONERS starred Alec Baldwin, Terri Hatcher, Kelly Lynch, Eric Roberts and Mary Stuart Masterson. IN THE ELECTRIC MIST WITH CONFEDERATE DEAD, starring Tommy Lee Jones, John Goodman and Mary Steenburgen.
What else is on the horizon for the Dave Robicheaux series?
After two so-so attempts to adapt James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux terrific mystery novel series into features, the New Orleans-based crime saga is being redrawn for cable TV. Fox-based producer Hutch Parker has optioned Burke’s books and is packaging the series. After how well FX and Graham Yost did with Elmore Leonard’s U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens character in the series Justified, cable sounds like just the place for Robicheaux if you're still a believer in cable (personally, I think cable is so 20th century and I would guess it won't be around in ten years given Netflix and Hulu's move as of late into developing their own exclusive series. I've been seriously considering shutting down cable.
Primarily known for his Dave Robicheaux series (with his Billy Bob Holland series rapidly catching up), Burke is known for marrying literature with crime-fiction while simultaneously standing at the forefront of crime-fiction authors with his second-to-none character development across a series. In case you haven't noticed, there's a marked increase in "regional" crime fiction of which Burke is a pioneer (for example: the Cork O'Connor series set in Minnesota, or the Walt Longmire series set in Wyoming). In this series, Burke exposes America to Louisiana and specifically to New Orleans and New Iberia. Having traveled quite a bit both within the United States as well as outside of it, it is my opinion that Louisiana is one of those states that most resembles a foreign country. Its French ancestry, its Napoleonic law, its parishes, and its Creole and Cajun population infuse this series with a decidedly exotic slant, a perspective that is really driven home when one listens to a competent audio book reading (preferably read by Mark Hammer).
Every novel in this series delves into moral uncertainty, the menace of uncontrolled human behavior, greed and sloth and violence all delivered via a careful juxtaposition of Louisiana's coastal natural beautfy and its dark underbelly. If that were all there is to this series, it would be a fabulous read. But, Burke doesn't stop there. His novels are a study into the deep recesses of love and loyalty; Of family and compassion and in this sense his resembles the work of William Kent Krueger who explores a similar vein in his crime series featuring Sherriff Cork O'Connor. It is James Lee Burke who stands out as one of the true pioneers in American crime-fiction (much as his counterparts do by rote in Scandinavia) by seriving up a devastating expose of the sociopolitical issues that exist in our nation today, and more specifically within the region for which he writes.
Unlike Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire series, who delivers a hero rather than an anti-hero (to the delight of his romantic literature fans), Burke has engaged the help of a decidedly flawed anti-hero, Dave Robicheaux, to accomplish his mission on earth. It is a calculated move that allows his readers to experience a harrowing journey through the former Napoleonic waters of New Iberia and New Orleans. You will not be disappointed and if you're like me (New Orleans and its French Quarter is a former home of mine), you will find yourself willfully putting the book down...not because the book's no good, but because it's so good you will want to savor every moment.
December 4, 2022
There is something about James Lee Burke’s writing that just gets under my skin. I always feel a bit like it’s over my head or just too poetic and beautiful and ugly for me to comprehend. But the story is there and the grit is real. Robicheaux is always a bit out of control and frankly a bit scary but he is also introspective and interesting and a family man. I know some find Burke too wordy and I rarely describe writing as beautiful or lyrical but in my mind that’s exactly what Burke embodies. And he does an excellent job of describing the South and the uneasy fit between the races and the rich and the poor. It’s never as simple and straightforward as our current social agenda seems to portray.
July 27, 2016
I enjoyed this book and James Lee Burke's writing style is superb. I have come across few authors who have the ability to describe New Orleans or Louisiana and leave you feeling like you are there. His characters are rich and colorful. To me though this story was not quite as good as earlier books. As usual there are several subplots but this time they did not seem to get tied up and the ending left things unexplained and unanswered.
The story opens when Dave bumps into Sonny Boy Marsallus in New Orleans. Sonny was a gambler. He would also lend money to prostitutes who wanted to leave the life. This did not sit well with the Giacano family and Sonny fled to El Salvador and Guatemala where he became a mercenary and also worked for the DEA. Now he is back. Sonny gives Dave a notebook and asks him to hold it. If nothing happens to him Dave can mail it to him. He tells Dave he gave a Xerox copy to a lady friend. Dave agrees to hold it for one week.
When Dave returns to New Iberia, Bertha Fontenot asks Dave for help. The Fontenot's, descendants of sharecroppers, have lived on Bertrand property for as long as anyone can remember. She claims the property they live on was given to them 95 years ago. Now Moleen Bertrand, heir of the plantation where that property lies, wants to evict them. There are rumors that Jean Lafitte buried gold.
At the same time Dave and another New Iberia police detective, Helen Soileau, are investigating the murder of Della Landry. She was the girlfriend of Sonny Boy Marsallus. Is her murder related to the notebook Sonny gave Dave to hold?
It is sometimes difficult to keep track of all the characters. Who is good? Who is bad? Of course there are the usual organized crime figures. But otherwise it seems to be a story about race and class. And about mercenaries and their sins in Vietnam and Central America. About the role of the government and the DEA. There seemed to be too many things going on and the ending left some things unexplained and unanswered but maybe sometimes that is how it is in reality. Sometimes maybe there isn't always an answer or explanation. Burke is still a master storyteller and I look forward to reading more of his work.
The story opens when Dave bumps into Sonny Boy Marsallus in New Orleans. Sonny was a gambler. He would also lend money to prostitutes who wanted to leave the life. This did not sit well with the Giacano family and Sonny fled to El Salvador and Guatemala where he became a mercenary and also worked for the DEA. Now he is back. Sonny gives Dave a notebook and asks him to hold it. If nothing happens to him Dave can mail it to him. He tells Dave he gave a Xerox copy to a lady friend. Dave agrees to hold it for one week.
When Dave returns to New Iberia, Bertha Fontenot asks Dave for help. The Fontenot's, descendants of sharecroppers, have lived on Bertrand property for as long as anyone can remember. She claims the property they live on was given to them 95 years ago. Now Moleen Bertrand, heir of the plantation where that property lies, wants to evict them. There are rumors that Jean Lafitte buried gold.
At the same time Dave and another New Iberia police detective, Helen Soileau, are investigating the murder of Della Landry. She was the girlfriend of Sonny Boy Marsallus. Is her murder related to the notebook Sonny gave Dave to hold?
It is sometimes difficult to keep track of all the characters. Who is good? Who is bad? Of course there are the usual organized crime figures. But otherwise it seems to be a story about race and class. And about mercenaries and their sins in Vietnam and Central America. About the role of the government and the DEA. There seemed to be too many things going on and the ending left some things unexplained and unanswered but maybe sometimes that is how it is in reality. Sometimes maybe there isn't always an answer or explanation. Burke is still a master storyteller and I look forward to reading more of his work.
February 10, 2017
Just because every word you write is beautiful and true doesn't mean they should all be there. This is, further, a shambolic mess. There is no story line.
But what poetry Burke makes. And why no film?
But what poetry Burke makes. And why no film?
October 7, 2012
I’ve been reading James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux series in order and this was number eight. Since reading many different series, I had forgotten how much I missed Burke’s thoughtful, insightful and descriptive writing.
Dave, as usual, is faced with bad guys who know no mercy. They are beyond the pale in cruelty and are not afraid to demonstrate it in any way imaginable. Burning Angel doesn’t move far from these wicked characters, with each one, in my mind, worse than the one before.
Clete who was long ago Dave’s partner at the New Orleans Police Department, went awry in previous books, but is now on track (and legal) is a private investigator and is at Dave’s side when the ‘chips are down.’ This book is no exception and makes Dave’s character even stronger by contrasting the two personalities; that is Dave, more morally forgiving and Clete feeling and saying something like, ‘Dave, the dude will clock you out before you blink an eye, so you go first.’ That’s not a direct quote, but clearly shows the two differing personalities, never of which is totally right or totally wrong.
I took notes on some of my favorite lines which show Dave’s constant moral dilemma between right and wrong and the thoughts and feelings of some of the characters he encounters:
• “My cell partner told me today my head’s like a bad neighborhood that I shouldn’t go into by myself. ‘There was a time in my life (Dave’s) when I was the same way. I just didn’t know how to say it.’”
• “Smoke ‘em or bust ‘em, make their puds shrivel up and hide, Clete used to say. But how you take pride in wrapping razor wire around the soul of a man who in all probability was detested before he left the womb?”
Dave continues with his gracious way of apologizing for the decades of the white establishment treating their servants and blacks, in general, the ways of subservience. Unfortunately and Dave says this, ‘we taught them well’ meaning the efforts of past generations to make blacks feel condescending to white people, especially white officials. He says “But as I watched her walk with labored dignity toward her car in the parking lot, I wondered if I, too, had yielded to that old white pretense of impatient charity with people of color, as though somehow they were incapable of understanding our efforts on their behalf.” (On a personal note, from time to time I see it myself, a native and resident of north Florida, whereby an older black fellow will open a door for me, with his head down, not looking me in the eye and mumbling, yes’um, ma’m when I say thank you. It saddens me and I agree with Burke (Dave) that we taught them well. It saddens me every time it happens.)
Lastly, another character, who I expect to show up in the next of the series, is Helen Soileau, Dave’s partner at the New Iberia Police Department. She’s quite an interesting character who resonates with a different attitude, sexual and otherwise. I like her, and she adds to Dave's opinions about social values.
Since the book had so many characters with a number of sub-plots, I felt the ending didn’t, in my mind, wrap up as nicely as previous books in the series.
My Goodreads friend, Jim A., who had read the book many years ago, graciously offered to read it again, and answered some of those questions of mine. I had concluded correctly, but felt much better that my conclusions were supported by another friend who is familiar with Burke and Dave. Many thanks to Jim for his time and assessment of the ending.
Great read, and hopefully, next time will not stay as long absent from James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux. Although it’s been said many times before, Burke’s lyrical writing, sometimes sing-song, is simply wonderful in my mind. His writing makes me think beyond the written words.
Dave, as usual, is faced with bad guys who know no mercy. They are beyond the pale in cruelty and are not afraid to demonstrate it in any way imaginable. Burning Angel doesn’t move far from these wicked characters, with each one, in my mind, worse than the one before.
Clete who was long ago Dave’s partner at the New Orleans Police Department, went awry in previous books, but is now on track (and legal) is a private investigator and is at Dave’s side when the ‘chips are down.’ This book is no exception and makes Dave’s character even stronger by contrasting the two personalities; that is Dave, more morally forgiving and Clete feeling and saying something like, ‘Dave, the dude will clock you out before you blink an eye, so you go first.’ That’s not a direct quote, but clearly shows the two differing personalities, never of which is totally right or totally wrong.
I took notes on some of my favorite lines which show Dave’s constant moral dilemma between right and wrong and the thoughts and feelings of some of the characters he encounters:
• “My cell partner told me today my head’s like a bad neighborhood that I shouldn’t go into by myself. ‘There was a time in my life (Dave’s) when I was the same way. I just didn’t know how to say it.’”
• “Smoke ‘em or bust ‘em, make their puds shrivel up and hide, Clete used to say. But how you take pride in wrapping razor wire around the soul of a man who in all probability was detested before he left the womb?”
Dave continues with his gracious way of apologizing for the decades of the white establishment treating their servants and blacks, in general, the ways of subservience. Unfortunately and Dave says this, ‘we taught them well’ meaning the efforts of past generations to make blacks feel condescending to white people, especially white officials. He says “But as I watched her walk with labored dignity toward her car in the parking lot, I wondered if I, too, had yielded to that old white pretense of impatient charity with people of color, as though somehow they were incapable of understanding our efforts on their behalf.” (On a personal note, from time to time I see it myself, a native and resident of north Florida, whereby an older black fellow will open a door for me, with his head down, not looking me in the eye and mumbling, yes’um, ma’m when I say thank you. It saddens me and I agree with Burke (Dave) that we taught them well. It saddens me every time it happens.)
Lastly, another character, who I expect to show up in the next of the series, is Helen Soileau, Dave’s partner at the New Iberia Police Department. She’s quite an interesting character who resonates with a different attitude, sexual and otherwise. I like her, and she adds to Dave's opinions about social values.
Since the book had so many characters with a number of sub-plots, I felt the ending didn’t, in my mind, wrap up as nicely as previous books in the series.
My Goodreads friend, Jim A., who had read the book many years ago, graciously offered to read it again, and answered some of those questions of mine. I had concluded correctly, but felt much better that my conclusions were supported by another friend who is familiar with Burke and Dave. Many thanks to Jim for his time and assessment of the ending.
Great read, and hopefully, next time will not stay as long absent from James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux. Although it’s been said many times before, Burke’s lyrical writing, sometimes sing-song, is simply wonderful in my mind. His writing makes me think beyond the written words.
December 26, 2023
"Hell don't have any boundaries. Don't you understand that?"
It's hard to explain just how much I've grown to love James Lee Burke, and here he's delivered another terrific edition in the series. He hit his stride back on the sixth novel and has never looked back. In Burning Angel, JLB returned to two things he's done with great success before: interwoven multiple plotlines involving crimes past and present, and added just a touch of the unexplained, this time in the form of an unlikely guardian angel.
The book starts with Detective Dave Robicheaux receiving a personal journal from Sonny Marsallus, a lower-level fixer currently working out of NOLA. The notebook contains Sonny's experiences in Vietnam, which a lot of people would rather never see the light of day. In a second storyline, a black woman claims her family has long owned their home, but white attorney Moline Bertrand, whose family has owned the land since before the Civil War, has begun a proceeding to get all the sharecropper families evicted, even though they've lived on Bertrand land for generations. Could an old legend that Jean Lafitte buried his gold in the area have something to do with Moline's sudden legal actions?
In classic Burke style, a list of criminal characters enters the plots. Some are reformed and trying to do the right things; others are out to do the greatest harm possible. What Burke does exceptionally well is characterization. You get the sense that even the most standard goon has a backstory for how he got to this point in his life. What clicks with me about Burke's books is the recurring theme that "law" does not mean "justice," especially with rampant corruption and a system that overpunishes the underprivileged and underpunishes everybody else. In such a world, the good guys have to be pretty bad themselves. Dave and his sidekick Clete Purcell are, in many ways, what circumstances have made them: tough enough to swim with the sharks and survive.
And I haven't yet mentioned that all this yummy goodness is wrapped up in some really gorgeous prose. Burke has the heart of a poet, which only seems like a juxtaposition for a Crime Thriller series, but it's not. It's unexpectedly satisfying.
This piece of land was our original sin, except we had found no baptismal rite to expunge it from our lives. That green-purple field of new cane was rooted in rib cage and eye socket. But what of the others whose lives had begun here and ended in other places? The ones who became prostitutes in cribs on Hopkins Street in New Iberia and Jane’s Alley in New Orleans, sliced their hands open with oyster knives, laid bare their shin bones with the cane sickle, learned the twelve-string blues on the Red Hat gang and in the camps at Angola with Leadbelly and Hogman Matthew Maxey, were virtually cooked alive in the castiron sweatboxes of Camp A, and rode Jim Crow trains North, as in a biblical exodus, to southside Chicago and the magic of 1925 Harlem, where they filled the air with the music of the South and the smell of cornbread and greens and pork chops fixed in sweet potatoes, as though they were still willing to forgive if we would only acknowledge their capacity for forgiveness. Tolstoy asked how much land did a man need. Just enough to let him feel the pull of the earth on his ankles and the claim it lays on the quick as well as the dead.
Onto the next book, Cadillac Jukebox.
June 24, 2009
Burke's mystery, unfolding in the swamps and back alleys of southern Louisiana, is not read to be solved. Akin to its predecessors, the novels of Chandler and Hammet, of Mosley and Greene, Burning Angel is not about the ending of the story, but is at its heart about suffering. Rather than a steely-eyed detective of the hardboiled tradition, however, the detective Robicheaux is plagued by guilt -- as are several of the characters in the novel -- replayed in his mind from a war gone by. In Burning Angel, the death of a single woman at the beginning of the novel sets in motion a series of events surrounding Robicheaux that eventually see virtually every single character treading a fine line of morality.
In Burke's Louisiana, everyone is guilty of something. It is therein that the relative crimes of every character is weighed. The extent to which we trust the hoods and cops depends solely upon how badly we rate their crimes. Sure, Robicheaux has killed before, his partner Helen beats criminals in custody, and his best friend Clete plants evidence; but compared to the child rapists and leaders of crime syndicates known for flaying their victims alive, there is no question of morality.
Reading the novel is like sinking into a gluttonous depiction of the South, feeding on the anguish and pain of its residents -- each fighting their own personal wars: against racism, against infidelity, against their own inner demons and in some cases their pasts. Burke has a way with his prose that captures the heat and pressure of summer in the South, and the guilt from within that threatens to push each characters' troubled pasts up from the ground in which they're buried, like bodies buried in muddy cemeteries built upon the unstable earth of New Orleans.
In Burke's Louisiana, everyone is guilty of something. It is therein that the relative crimes of every character is weighed. The extent to which we trust the hoods and cops depends solely upon how badly we rate their crimes. Sure, Robicheaux has killed before, his partner Helen beats criminals in custody, and his best friend Clete plants evidence; but compared to the child rapists and leaders of crime syndicates known for flaying their victims alive, there is no question of morality.
Reading the novel is like sinking into a gluttonous depiction of the South, feeding on the anguish and pain of its residents -- each fighting their own personal wars: against racism, against infidelity, against their own inner demons and in some cases their pasts. Burke has a way with his prose that captures the heat and pressure of summer in the South, and the guilt from within that threatens to push each characters' troubled pasts up from the ground in which they're buried, like bodies buried in muddy cemeteries built upon the unstable earth of New Orleans.
June 15, 2016
A hot mess. (Sorry, couldn't help myself.) This is my least favorite Burke novel so far, and by that I mean I will read more of Burke as I know his capability with mystery/thrillers. The huge problem here is that the plot is a mess. To me, this feels like a bunch of short stories shuffled together: the result is nonsensical. A mistake by a very good writer. And we all make mistakes.
July 22, 2017
This is book number 8 in the Dave Robicheaux series and I'm still addicted. This series is just getting better and better!
March 13, 2025
Things start rolling when Sonny Boy Marsallas gives Dave a cryptic notebook for safekeeping. From there the usual murder and mayhem of a Robicheaux novel ensues. It takes quite a while into the book to reveal what Sonny’s diary means to the story, but I think that helped keep my interest in the book. I quite enjoyed the surprises as we come to the end of the story. I think it all worked well. Plus, any Robicheaux novel is always better with Clete in it.
May 16, 2013
I've enjoyed and reviewed the whole Robicheaux series up to this point over the course of the last year, & began with a much more recent one that I read out of sequence because it found its way into my home. So now that I've commented multiple times upon the brilliance and eloquence of this writer, I just have to get this off my chest:
Does this protagonist EVER eat VEGETABLES? (Onions on a sandwich don't count!)
We move through the plot lines with a steady series of meals, & this makes it realistic. Some crime/mystery writers have protagonists who appear to never eat or sleep, & at some point one starts to notice. This writer uses food to evoke a sense of setting, constantly parading before us his begniets, his boudin, his po' boy sandwiches. He fries fish and gobbles that up, too.
In one of his novels his narrative mentions a bad guy as being among those who let their bodies get vastly overweight because they eat wrong and don't care what they look like, and I want to say, maybe they didn't get your excellent DNA, pal, because even though you jog & work out, your diet is a walking heart attack. Coffee, Dr. Pepper, fried fish, dairy, and starch. Holy crap.
Okay, I just had to rant this once about that, because I've been thinking about it awhile.
The story line itself is like others, except that it isn't; by this time he has established a following, and the series is consistent in its approach and has characters we see again, and others that are hauntingly real, but that we probably won't see. As always, Burke uses his characters to show us the ambiguity in humanity, and that sometimes the people you expect to be good guys aren't all that good, and that sometimes the archetypical bad guy has some good in him, too. In this story, a gangster gives his life to save Dave's. This also gives him one more dead person to talk to and dream about. But it isn't stale; it makes me snuggle a bit more deeply under the comforter at night and think, "Ah yes! Here we go!"
If you are a reader of Burke's who fancies Clete Purcel, as my spouse and I do (and my guy, who is almost always strictly a nonfiction reader, is completely hooked on this series and is reading ahead of me now, chuckling happily whenever he runs across Cletus), be assured he is an integral part of this particular story, and he's in fine form.
The constant struggle Robicheaux finds throughout his career is that when you are a cop, you have a decent paycheck, the authority to do things that a private citizen cannot, and a certain amount of personal protection, especially in dealing with mobsters. But the problem with being a cop is that you're working for an apparatus that is not set up to defend those who need it most:
"The big trade-off is one's humanity...you start your career with the moral clarity of the youthful altruist, then gradually you begin to feel betrayed by those you supposedly protect and serve. You're not welcome in their part of town...the most venal bondsman can walk with immunity through neighborhoods where you'll be shot at by snipers. You begin to believe that there are those in our midst who are not part of the same gene pool. You think of them as subhuman...whom you treat in custody as you would humorous circus animals."
From there, he describes the quick, slippery slope in which a cop may shoot a suspect who held something out that glinted in the very dark night and which the cop thought to be a weapon. After shooting the man with the screwdriver or car keys in his hand, a weapon with a filed serial number gets wrapped in the guy's hand, then dropped nearby. And cops stand by one another in these cases. The corruption has solidified, and you are no longer on the side of the angels.
He does a nice job with character development here. His wife Bootsie is not the frightened and easily horrified woman she once was; when he launches himself out into the darkness to do something dangerous, she sends him off with the reminder: "Watch your ass, kiddo."
Alafair, an enchanting toddler when the series started, has begun dating. She won't let him call her 'little guy' anymore. And she learns how to use a gun, because it seems as if bad guys are always lurking around, waiting to exact revenge either on her father, or against him by harming her family. She wants to be ready.
He's on the force; he's off it. The bait shop/cafe doesn't make more than 15K a year; the family can't live off that. The private detective business Clete recruits him into doesn't make good money either. The only takers are the bad guys they don't want to deal with.
At one point, someone reminds him that having his badge means he gets to walk on the curb instead of in the gutter. But he is ambivalent, because being the enforcement arm of the US government isn't pretty, and there's no way to turn that around. Being a rural deputy rather than a city cop is the compromise he has made at this point, but it's still a nasty business, and as usual, the ending is bittersweet.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Does this protagonist EVER eat VEGETABLES? (Onions on a sandwich don't count!)
We move through the plot lines with a steady series of meals, & this makes it realistic. Some crime/mystery writers have protagonists who appear to never eat or sleep, & at some point one starts to notice. This writer uses food to evoke a sense of setting, constantly parading before us his begniets, his boudin, his po' boy sandwiches. He fries fish and gobbles that up, too.
In one of his novels his narrative mentions a bad guy as being among those who let their bodies get vastly overweight because they eat wrong and don't care what they look like, and I want to say, maybe they didn't get your excellent DNA, pal, because even though you jog & work out, your diet is a walking heart attack. Coffee, Dr. Pepper, fried fish, dairy, and starch. Holy crap.
Okay, I just had to rant this once about that, because I've been thinking about it awhile.
The story line itself is like others, except that it isn't; by this time he has established a following, and the series is consistent in its approach and has characters we see again, and others that are hauntingly real, but that we probably won't see. As always, Burke uses his characters to show us the ambiguity in humanity, and that sometimes the people you expect to be good guys aren't all that good, and that sometimes the archetypical bad guy has some good in him, too. In this story, a gangster gives his life to save Dave's. This also gives him one more dead person to talk to and dream about. But it isn't stale; it makes me snuggle a bit more deeply under the comforter at night and think, "Ah yes! Here we go!"
If you are a reader of Burke's who fancies Clete Purcel, as my spouse and I do (and my guy, who is almost always strictly a nonfiction reader, is completely hooked on this series and is reading ahead of me now, chuckling happily whenever he runs across Cletus), be assured he is an integral part of this particular story, and he's in fine form.
The constant struggle Robicheaux finds throughout his career is that when you are a cop, you have a decent paycheck, the authority to do things that a private citizen cannot, and a certain amount of personal protection, especially in dealing with mobsters. But the problem with being a cop is that you're working for an apparatus that is not set up to defend those who need it most:
"The big trade-off is one's humanity...you start your career with the moral clarity of the youthful altruist, then gradually you begin to feel betrayed by those you supposedly protect and serve. You're not welcome in their part of town...the most venal bondsman can walk with immunity through neighborhoods where you'll be shot at by snipers. You begin to believe that there are those in our midst who are not part of the same gene pool. You think of them as subhuman...whom you treat in custody as you would humorous circus animals."
From there, he describes the quick, slippery slope in which a cop may shoot a suspect who held something out that glinted in the very dark night and which the cop thought to be a weapon. After shooting the man with the screwdriver or car keys in his hand, a weapon with a filed serial number gets wrapped in the guy's hand, then dropped nearby. And cops stand by one another in these cases. The corruption has solidified, and you are no longer on the side of the angels.
He does a nice job with character development here. His wife Bootsie is not the frightened and easily horrified woman she once was; when he launches himself out into the darkness to do something dangerous, she sends him off with the reminder: "Watch your ass, kiddo."
Alafair, an enchanting toddler when the series started, has begun dating. She won't let him call her 'little guy' anymore. And she learns how to use a gun, because it seems as if bad guys are always lurking around, waiting to exact revenge either on her father, or against him by harming her family. She wants to be ready.
He's on the force; he's off it. The bait shop/cafe doesn't make more than 15K a year; the family can't live off that. The private detective business Clete recruits him into doesn't make good money either. The only takers are the bad guys they don't want to deal with.
At one point, someone reminds him that having his badge means he gets to walk on the curb instead of in the gutter. But he is ambivalent, because being the enforcement arm of the US government isn't pretty, and there's no way to turn that around. Being a rural deputy rather than a city cop is the compromise he has made at this point, but it's still a nasty business, and as usual, the ending is bittersweet.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
February 24, 2021
Alas, not one of my favorites - either of JLB's books or of the Robicheaux series. Still, pretty darn entertaining, with many of the lyrical flourishes that make JLB a pleasure to read ... and, ultimately, a compelling (albeit somewhat confusing ... or, to me, flummoxing) page turner.
I'm disinclined to invest a lot of energy trying to divine why this one spoke to me less than most. I've read enough of (again, both) JLB and the Robicheaux series to appreciate the craft, buy into (and care about) the cast, and enjoy the packaging and presentation.
Still, I concede that, on more than one occasion, I lost the thread, confused some of the plot lines, couldn't keep the past-meets-present straight, mixed up some of the seemingly innumerable villains and creeps and lowlifes and scallywags and sellouts and hangers-on, and jumbled one or more familial relations. OK, I found myself back tracking and re-reading (far) more often than I normally do in a JLB novel. And, yet, I kept turning the pages, remained interested in the resolution, and promptly plowed through the entirety rather than turn to something else...
So, sooner, rather than later, I'll forget about this one and move on to the next one.
I'm disinclined to invest a lot of energy trying to divine why this one spoke to me less than most. I've read enough of (again, both) JLB and the Robicheaux series to appreciate the craft, buy into (and care about) the cast, and enjoy the packaging and presentation.
Still, I concede that, on more than one occasion, I lost the thread, confused some of the plot lines, couldn't keep the past-meets-present straight, mixed up some of the seemingly innumerable villains and creeps and lowlifes and scallywags and sellouts and hangers-on, and jumbled one or more familial relations. OK, I found myself back tracking and re-reading (far) more often than I normally do in a JLB novel. And, yet, I kept turning the pages, remained interested in the resolution, and promptly plowed through the entirety rather than turn to something else...
So, sooner, rather than later, I'll forget about this one and move on to the next one.
January 5, 2016
Burning Angel by James Lee Burke.
I've been reading as well as addicted to the Dave Robicheaux series especially when Clete Purcell is in the mix.
Trouble seems to follow Dave or is the other way around? Clete Purcell brings uncontrollable chaos into the already chaotic world known as the Louisiana Bayou. Expect the totally unexpected in this Dave Robicheaux mystery.
For all mystery lovers especially those hooked on Dave Robicheaux with Clete Purcell. Listened to on CD narrated/performed by Mark Hammer.
I've been reading as well as addicted to the Dave Robicheaux series especially when Clete Purcell is in the mix.
Trouble seems to follow Dave or is the other way around? Clete Purcell brings uncontrollable chaos into the already chaotic world known as the Louisiana Bayou. Expect the totally unexpected in this Dave Robicheaux mystery.
For all mystery lovers especially those hooked on Dave Robicheaux with Clete Purcell. Listened to on CD narrated/performed by Mark Hammer.
April 6, 2017
James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux series transcends the bounds of detective fiction and deserves the title of literature. Burning Angel, the eighth book in his time-tested series, proves the point. These novels are worth reading for their prose style alone. They’re written as well as anything I’ve read that is deemed Southern literature.
Lyricism and brutality in James Lee Burke
Burke’s prose is lyrical when describing the lush environment of rural Louisiana, brutally graphic in passages that describe the ever-present violence. Burke’s not for the squeamish. But if you can stand the heat, you’ll be well rewarded.
In Burning Angel, as in so much of the series, Dave Robicheaux tangles with the New Orleans mob when its tentacles extend into his own territory, New Iberia Parish. This time the Giacano crime family takes a bow. The wounded Vietnam veteran, former New Orleans police lieutenant, now deputy sheriff, and future private investigator finds himself face-to-face with the family’s predictably violent and probably deranged soldiers. Key among them is a crafty local thug named Sonny Marsallus, whom Dave knew as a child growing up in Iberia parish.
A cast of characters, familiar and unfamiliar
The series’ familiar characters are all present. Dave’s second wife, Bootsie; their adopted daughter, Alafair, now thirteen; the elderly Black man, Batist, who works with Dave in the bait-and-sandwich shop in his back yard; Dave’s predictably unpredictable former NOPD partner, Cletus Purcel; and an elected sheriff who had no prior police experience. The novel introduces a fresh cast of bad guys, including a corrupt cop, a bent wealthy lawyer, brothel owners, poor local African-Americans, and an assortment of psychopaths associated with the New Orleans mob.
In any one of the Dave Robicheaux novels, you can safely expect that not just Dave but everyone around him, including his wife and daughter, will be threatened with danger. You can also expect Dave to exhibit physical courage to the point of foolhardiness. Clete Purcel is even worse. At times, it appears that the two of them are more violent than the criminals they’re chasing. But it’s all in what might, at a stretch, be called fun.
Lyricism and brutality in James Lee Burke
Burke’s prose is lyrical when describing the lush environment of rural Louisiana, brutally graphic in passages that describe the ever-present violence. Burke’s not for the squeamish. But if you can stand the heat, you’ll be well rewarded.
In Burning Angel, as in so much of the series, Dave Robicheaux tangles with the New Orleans mob when its tentacles extend into his own territory, New Iberia Parish. This time the Giacano crime family takes a bow. The wounded Vietnam veteran, former New Orleans police lieutenant, now deputy sheriff, and future private investigator finds himself face-to-face with the family’s predictably violent and probably deranged soldiers. Key among them is a crafty local thug named Sonny Marsallus, whom Dave knew as a child growing up in Iberia parish.
A cast of characters, familiar and unfamiliar
The series’ familiar characters are all present. Dave’s second wife, Bootsie; their adopted daughter, Alafair, now thirteen; the elderly Black man, Batist, who works with Dave in the bait-and-sandwich shop in his back yard; Dave’s predictably unpredictable former NOPD partner, Cletus Purcel; and an elected sheriff who had no prior police experience. The novel introduces a fresh cast of bad guys, including a corrupt cop, a bent wealthy lawyer, brothel owners, poor local African-Americans, and an assortment of psychopaths associated with the New Orleans mob.
In any one of the Dave Robicheaux novels, you can safely expect that not just Dave but everyone around him, including his wife and daughter, will be threatened with danger. You can also expect Dave to exhibit physical courage to the point of foolhardiness. Clete Purcel is even worse. At times, it appears that the two of them are more violent than the criminals they’re chasing. But it’s all in what might, at a stretch, be called fun.
August 12, 2016
Eight books into this series, and I’m beginning to think author James Lee Burke is in too deep. The prose is great, and unlike anything you will find in other crime/mystery novels, but often there is just too much to digest all at once. Multiple plot lines begin to collide, with recognizable themes from previous novels. The complex and well-developed protagonist is Dave Robicheaux, a veteran now working as homicide detective for the sheriff’s department. Burke likes to take characters and elements from Dave’s past, either the horrors of Viet Nam or characters from his early years in NOLA, mix them with present day Mafia and assorted low-lifes, add the tension of balancing his family life and personal demons, throw in a little Southern Gothic mysticism and Louisiana history and set the whole thing in a lush, humid setting and you have the basis for each novel. Unfortunately, the plot sometimes takes a back seat to all of this, to the point where I’m confused, or worse, a little complacent. I can’t even say that the mysteries are even resolved to the reader’s satisfaction at the end. There were a lot of loose ends in this one, and perhaps this is the point, as Robicheaux often bemoans the never ending downward spiral of his beloved NOLA at the hands of an inexhaustible supply of morally corrupt interlopers. I found myself more interested in the character developments of Robichaux’s wife, daughter and his old partner Clete Purcel than the mysteries of each case. This is a little frustrating, because the writing style is so good.
Overall, Burning Angel is decent, but not nearly as good as the first few books in this series. For me, the best thing that can happen is for Burke to break the mold for a book or two and simplify the plot. I’ll just have to wait and see what’s in store in the next one.
Overall, Burning Angel is decent, but not nearly as good as the first few books in this series. For me, the best thing that can happen is for Burke to break the mold for a book or two and simplify the plot. I’ll just have to wait and see what’s in store in the next one.
May 26, 2012
5 stars. Beautifully written. And the subject matter is fearsome: Dave Robicheaux's way of treating with his world here clashes, even in dream, with a whole lot of forces, mores, and assumptions that pervade the world he lives in. 'Even inside the dream I know I'm experiencing what a psychologist once told me is a world destruction fantasy. But my knowledge that it is only a dream does no good; I cannot extricate myself from it.' He lives in a beautiful and deadly world, in which the great chain of being operates on the principle of 'eat or be eaten'. But in the waking world at least Dave has to find a way to go on living in it. So he begins to make his choices, essays small interventions. He quickly finds himself in more than one another country, where nothing is as it seems and he must risk everything he loves to right imbalances, until his whole world makes sense to him again. And meanwhile, everything he is and loves remains at risk. At every turn he must decide what to let go of, what he needs to keep. 'It was all that quick, as though a loud train had gone past me, slamming across switches, baking the track with its own heat, creating a tunnel of sound and energy so intense that the rails seem to reshape like bronze licorice under the wheels; then silence that's like hands clapped across the eardrums, a field of weeds that smell of dust and creosote, a lighted club car disappearing across the prairie.' A little masterpiece, this one, and maybe the only pure magic realism novel in the whole series too.
October 30, 2007
One of my favorite books ever. This was the first James Lee Burke I ever read and it is what got me completely hooked on him - especially the Dave Robicheaux books. Discovering this author and this series is one of those things that just sticks in my brain - I remember where I bought the book (at a newly opened Borders), where it was displayed in the store, and I remember taking it on vacation with me and sitting in a park on Martha's Vineyard reading it and someone walking by, calling out "James Lee Burke!" and giving me the thumbs up sign. I've read this twice and listened to it on audio at least once. I'll probably read it again some day.
March 15, 2021
first re-read of this one written in 1995, part of the long Dave Robicheaux series (25 novels). JLB writes so exquisitely, I never want to miss one word. He writes about Good and Evil, so you need to be able to look Evil right in the eye. The Dave Robicheaux character is so compelling, and his use of language when he talks is beyond the coolest ever. Just loved it. “A witness down by the collapsed pier said Sonny seemed painted with magic.”
and “I couldn’t accept Sonny’s death. People like Sonny didn’t die. They stayed high on their own rebop, heard Charlie Parker’s riffs in the friction of the spheres, thrived without sunlight in the neon glaze of Canal and Saint Charles, fashioned sonnets out of street language, and proved to the rest of us that you could live with the full-tilt boogie in your heart and glide above the murderous fastenings of triviality.”
and “I couldn’t accept Sonny’s death. People like Sonny didn’t die. They stayed high on their own rebop, heard Charlie Parker’s riffs in the friction of the spheres, thrived without sunlight in the neon glaze of Canal and Saint Charles, fashioned sonnets out of street language, and proved to the rest of us that you could live with the full-tilt boogie in your heart and glide above the murderous fastenings of triviality.”
June 25, 2022
Very reminiscent of In the Electric Mist with the Confederate Dead, Burning Angel is the most sedate entry in Robicheaux series with the writing doing the heavy lifting. However unlike that book Burning Angel uses magical realism as an important part of the plot which simply does not work in the world Burke creates.
There are a couple of plot-lines regarding soldiers of fortune having a crisis of conscience, a mob boss trying to recapture mafioso's glory days and a business man being caught between a rock and a hard place. All of them remain disjointed and none of them have a satisfactory conclusion. The writing though is a thing of beauty, a collector's item, an essence to savor.
The characters as always in a Burke novel are richly drawn. They are fueled and ultimately felled by weapons as diverse as poverty and pride. They are buried under the compromises they make and buried deeper still by the guilt it brings. I really loved the book for a long portion of it but the ending that changes genre making it a paranormal mystery felt like a tone deaf solution.
James Lee Burke in an interview once mentioned he did not change his writing style in any conceivable way between writing Pulitzer nominated The Lost Get-Back Bogie and his Edgar winning crime series featuring Robicheaux. This is most evident in Burning Angel, however in this instance it becomes a double edged sword - the writing captivates but the plot is marooned in some forsaken corner.
This seems like a book written in a fever dream, there are hints of connecting tissues between the different strands but they remain invisible. Like a hallucination, some of it is utterly spellbinding while some of it makes no sense. Ultimately I hate Deus Ex Machina endings and my rating reflects that with the caveat that this entry is in no way of representative of the whole series which is usually brilliant. Rating - 3/5.
There are a couple of plot-lines regarding soldiers of fortune having a crisis of conscience, a mob boss trying to recapture mafioso's glory days and a business man being caught between a rock and a hard place. All of them remain disjointed and none of them have a satisfactory conclusion. The writing though is a thing of beauty, a collector's item, an essence to savor.
The characters as always in a Burke novel are richly drawn. They are fueled and ultimately felled by weapons as diverse as poverty and pride. They are buried under the compromises they make and buried deeper still by the guilt it brings. I really loved the book for a long portion of it but the ending that changes genre making it a paranormal mystery felt like a tone deaf solution.
James Lee Burke in an interview once mentioned he did not change his writing style in any conceivable way between writing Pulitzer nominated The Lost Get-Back Bogie and his Edgar winning crime series featuring Robicheaux. This is most evident in Burning Angel, however in this instance it becomes a double edged sword - the writing captivates but the plot is marooned in some forsaken corner.
This seems like a book written in a fever dream, there are hints of connecting tissues between the different strands but they remain invisible. Like a hallucination, some of it is utterly spellbinding while some of it makes no sense. Ultimately I hate Deus Ex Machina endings and my rating reflects that with the caveat that this entry is in no way of representative of the whole series which is usually brilliant. Rating - 3/5.
October 22, 2011
James Lee Burke takes the very popular, and often employed, Police/Crime/Thriller Genre, and infuses this literary style with lyricism worthy of a poet. The vivid descriptions of rural Louisiana, Dave Robicheaux's dark and troubled alcoholic past, and Dave's love and respect for his family and co-workers all contribute to a novel which resonates long after you've finished the final chapter. The central character of BURNING ANGEL is Sonny Boy Marsallus who was once a friend to Robicheaux, and has an almost mythic life. He has ties to the Giancano family, contemporary New Orleans mafia overlords, he is a fixer and money lender, and has a dark and corrupt past which he acquired in the jungles of Central America during the bloody Reagan years. Also, a subplot concerns a wealthy family who seems to be trying to evict black homeowners who have laid claim to the area for generations. This is the kind of novel that you want to take your time reading, and savor each well written page.
March 9, 2013
I’d give this more than five stars if I could, but that’s the maximum Goodreads allows. This is an absolutely wonderful book. True, Dave Robicheaux is one of the most violent characters around, as is Clete Purcel, and they’re surrounded by corrupt and violent people. But the language is almost poetry, the descriptions of the Louisiana landscape are Impressionistic in their beauty, and unlike Mike Hammer Dave thinks about his brutality and about the world around him. As to the story here, it’s a maze. There isn’t one single mystery to solve, but rather several, all of them subordinate to Dave’s account of the events that took place in the wake of Sonny Boy Marsallus returning to southern Louisiana. It may be that the main mystery has nothing to do with crime, but is rather whether Sonny was in fact alive after he went bleeding into the ocean, or it was his ghost which appeared to protect Dave and his family.
April 12, 2011
wow talk about stylized writing at its finest !! I LOVED THIS NOVEL not simply due to the fact that I was a resident of the area in mention ( LA living). The author simply could set a scene, use local dialect,. and leave you wantin a hurricane on your porch during a craw fish boil while a warm breeze runs through your naked toes. There is no question,...this IS SOUTHERN living expressed in all its fancy. There are many twists and turns leaving you wondering which parish your currently standing in. The characters are full of quirks and mystery which surrounds plantation living and evoke nothing short of scarlet o harra in the backdrop
May 13, 2012
I could NEVER get enough of James Lee Burke. He is amazing. I love the way he kind of drifts off into Dave's dreams, and the descriptions he gives of places and people are wonderful. I've seen a couple of films now, based on his books. THANK GOD I read the books first. The films never match up to the pictures I am able to create in my head as I read these fantastic stories. For a while Billy Bob Holland was my favourite character of JLB, Dave Robicheaux is starting to overtake. Really can't wait for the next one ... I have "A morning for flamingos" gently calling my name from the shelf....and I'm desperate to make a start on it.
July 10, 2015
James Lee Burke is a fantastic writer. I have read 10 books in this series and others that he has written. I won't say much because I don't want to be critical of his work. To me, this book was overly confusing with too many characters and sub-stories and often no conclusions to some of the threads. Perhaps my concentration was less than it should be. I love the series as a whole. I had trouble with some of the slang and really didn't care to find out other than logical deduction. However, I really enjoy the sections about Dave's home life and family and I am happy when Clete is prominant in the story.
March 24, 2016
Like this series a lot he has a whole bunch of books like maybe 20 in this David Robicheaux series and I read the book called three great novels which has Dixie City Jam, Burning Angel .and Purple Cane Road.
I happen to run across this book in a Goodwill where I find a lot of my books and just picked it up case I wanted to read something and glad I did.
If you like detective stories and want to read about the south in the New Orleans Louisiana area this is the book for you. Mr Burke has a way of building a story line so you can picture the characters and landscape of the surrounding area.
Maybe you should try it!!
I happen to run across this book in a Goodwill where I find a lot of my books and just picked it up case I wanted to read something and glad I did.
If you like detective stories and want to read about the south in the New Orleans Louisiana area this is the book for you. Mr Burke has a way of building a story line so you can picture the characters and landscape of the surrounding area.
Maybe you should try it!!
March 3, 2017
Once again I was drawn in by Burke's picture perfect writing style. I am not just reading, Burke takes me go on a journey, one where I can see, smell and touch ever thing that he describes, the cloying earthy smell of the bayou, the heavy damp air that envelops our skin and kinks your hair, the brilliant lightening on display over the Gulf. Robicheaux and Purcel are old friends who never disappoint, different, yet more alike than Dave would care to admit. Dave has strong feeling about every thing and because of those feeling he gets involved in things that would have been better left alone, but that makes Dave, Dave and why I read the books.
July 10, 2009
Another winner, it filled in the gaps on Dave Robicheaux's history. I found this in Beaver Island (MI) public library and couldn't believe I'd missed adding this one to my collection. The thing I really love about Burke's books is you can open to any page, read a paragraph (including the last page), and enjoy it not even knowing the plot. And if you read the last page first, it wouldn't give away anything. Although these books (and the main character) are dark, if you savor good literature, this is a must read author (and his daughter Alifair is quite good as well).
May 16, 2011
James is one of the best crime writers - I love his books.
Back Cover Blurb:
Sonny Boy Marsallas, a New Orleans street hustler, entrusts Detective Dave Robicheaux with a mysterious notebook, kicking off a series of violent incidents and raising questions that need answers, and fast....
What did Sonny's girlfriend know that got her murdered? Why is Sonny known as Red Angel by Central American guerrillas? And what do the Mafia want with a desolate stretch of New Iberia?
This time Sonny Boy may have pushed his luck with the Giacano family one deal too far.
Back Cover Blurb:
Sonny Boy Marsallas, a New Orleans street hustler, entrusts Detective Dave Robicheaux with a mysterious notebook, kicking off a series of violent incidents and raising questions that need answers, and fast....
What did Sonny's girlfriend know that got her murdered? Why is Sonny known as Red Angel by Central American guerrillas? And what do the Mafia want with a desolate stretch of New Iberia?
This time Sonny Boy may have pushed his luck with the Giacano family one deal too far.
September 14, 2009
my husband and i are on a quest to read all 24 of james lee burke's novels. we really think that he is an exceptional author. this one has a little of the nam experience, some early slave history and lots of just plain dave robicheaux and clete purcell adventures. the wife at present is bootsie, and alafair is in high school. naturally, there is a new cast of victims and bad guys. dave is let go by the sheriff's dept and teams up with clete as a PI. great reading!
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