I read the first of James Lee Burke’s twenty novels featuring Dave Robicheaux The Neon Rain in July of 1990. I loved it and I have read almost every books since. I actually finished reading the latest book Light of the World back on the 14th of April, but I am just getting around to writing about it now and for most of those 16 days I’ve asked myself why am I avoiding writing about the book. The truth of the matter is that I really don’t know why except that I just thought that there was just something amiss with the book. It certainly wasn’t the descriptive writing that Burke is so well-known for, because that was still there, although this time he was describing Montana and not the Louisiana  bayou. And it wasn’t that Dave and Clete Purcel were not battling some really bad villans because the main one serial killer Asa Surrette was a bad as they come and many of the other characters on both sides of the law were pretty evil, too. So what was it?? I know that at 502 pages this book is the longest of the series, and it took me a long time to get through it. Actually, it took much longer for me to get through the first half of the book than the second. Generally I think that Burke may have tried to force things a little too much, for me it seemed that there were too many bad guys, none on the level of Asa but a couple them, including one police officer came pretty close and the rich folks that Dave and Clete always run up against were no sweethearts either!

The story starts with Dave’s family wife Molly, and daughter Alafair on vacation with Clete in Montana. They are joined in this adventure by Clete’s newly discovered daughter Gretchen Horowitiz a former Mafia hitman turned movie maker who is on a busman’s holiday as she is visiting Montana to work on a documentary concerning the environmental damage wrought by the oil and gas industry. When they first arrive Alafair has an arrow fly past her and the question raised is who tried to kill her, She is convinced that it the shooter was Asa Surrette As Dave and Clete and the gang set out to discover who did fire they arrow/ They meet up with an ex-con and Rodeo rider Wyatt Dixon. Wyatt’s new talent is that he can talk in tongues. Both Dave Wyatt believe that the shooter was Asa Surrette who is out to even the score with Alafair for what she wrote about Asa that got him sentenced to prison. Dave and Wyatt  are also convinced that Asa is well beyond a normal being and is rather the true personification of evil. In addition to this the police are also investigating the murder of the adopted Indian daughter of Caspian Young son of oil baron Love Young(these are the rich people Dave and Clete are bumping heads with), a crime the Police think Wyatt committed. Are you lost yet, see why Burke needed 502 pages… because in addition to these story lines there is also one or two involving Gretchen!! And then Asa uses the name of a Roman Emperor, and the wife, of Caspian, becomes a gladiator ready to sacrifice her life….too much yet? I don’t think I understand all the undercurrents….

Ok so the bottom line did I enjoy the book, yes  Would I recommend it, yes, but I think you should read several of the other books first  Finally, before I wrote this post I read this book review in The Houston Chronicle Review: James Lee Burke faces dilemma in “Light of the World” in the review Mike Snyder writes:

…But Burke has a problem: His signature character, Robicheaux, is about played out.

It’s hard to provide new insights about a guy whose life Burke’s dedicated readers have been following so devotedly since the first book in the series, “The Neon Rain,” was published in 1987. Those who have read all or most of the Robicheaux books — surely a substantial portion of Burke’s readers — might be tempted to skip the pages with the familiar back story. They already know about the death of Robicheaux’s father in an offshore-oil-rig accident. They know about the years when Robicheaux bonded with sidekick Clete Purcel in the jungles of Vietnam and later on the streets of New Orleans, where the two police officers were known as “the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide.” They know about his alcoholism and recovery.

and summarizes …..

Burke’s writing gifts haven’t dimmed, but the character who defines his career has lost his luster. It’s quite a dilemma. Read Full Review

Sadly, I say, I really have to agree with him and maybe that’s the reason I didn’t love the book like the earlier ones. Throughout the book I kinda’ felt that Dave was really a fifth wheel to Clete and Gretchen… and I don’t know if that’s the way I like it!! But I know I will still be waiting for the next installment of the series!!

I have feeling that if I were an English major or at least more literature literate, I would love the great novels of James Lee Burke even more than I do presently! Creole Belle is the 19th Burke novel featuring Dave Robicheaux and is Book 14 for 2013 this one took a while to read, mainly because it is rather long (528 pages) and I got distracted by a couple of other books, but when I came back and picked it up about midway through, I zipped right through it, especially over the last two hundred or so pages. Like all the other books it’s a whopping good read!!

In his installment, Dave is in the hospital recovering from injuries sustained in the last book (hint: read The Glass Rainbow first!) anyway, a young woman Tee Jolie Melton, visits Dave in the hospital and leaves him an iPod with her songs on it including “My Creole Belle”. When Dave tells people this no one believes him because Tee Jolie disappeared weeks ago. Her sister has also disappeared only her body washes up on shore in a block of ice… with a message that Tee Jolie is still alive. Soon Dave is on a quest to find tee Jolie. Meanwhile Dave’s former partner and best friend Clete Purcell is confronted with problems of his own, some greaseballs are trying to shake him down for a past due debt…. when one of the slime balls is murdered, the hitman is a young woman, who Clete thinks is his daughter from a relationship years ago! Soon Dave and Clete are off their quests. Dave to find Tee Jolie and Clete to find and save his daughter and himself. Along the way they face some of the meanest and most diabolical foes they’ve ever faced and Dave, his family, wife Molly and daughter Alafair are all targets!!

As in all of Burke’s books, the all the characters are superbly developed and in this book the cast is very large! And the images of Louisiana paints with his probe, leave you smelling the bayou and the magnolias and wishing you could be there…. a fellow reader Sue at Goodreads included this passage in her review of Creole Belle and it is a great example of Burke’s writing:

“…The boughs of the cypress trees were as brittle and delicate as gold leaf in the late sun. An alligator gar was swimming along the edge of the lily pads, its needle-
nose head and lacquered spine and dorsal fin parting the surface with a

fluidity that was more serpent than fish.

 

…Then the wind gusted and a long shaft of amber sunlight
seemed to race down the center of the bayou, like a paean
to the close of day and the coming of night and the cooling
of the earth, as though vespers and the acceptance of the
season were a seamless and inseparable part of life that
only the most vain and intransigent among us would deny.”

 

So if you’ve never read James Lee Burke’s books go find The Glass Rainbow and then follow it up with Creole Belle and I’m sure after those two you’ll go back and read Dave Robicheaux’s 17 other adventures! Hell, you have to find out why Clete and Dave fight both their demons, and the bad guys!

As for me I finished just in time for the next installment coming in July, Light of the World