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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
James lee Burke is a master of the sentence!!! Love his descriptions and his characters and the plot!!
I felt like this book draggggged on like a hot Louisiana day: miserable and hard to get through. I didn’t like any of the characters, I thought the mystery was convoluted and confusing, and I didn’t think the book has aged well. This came out in 1989, and I feel like it hasn’t withstood the test of time.
In the third book of James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux stories many of the usual characters end up in Montana. Dave is accused of murder in Louisiana and while out on bail goes to Montana to find the people who can prove his innocence. Along with Robicheau and his adopted daughter Alafair his former police partner Clete shows up. Suspect oil leases, the mafia, the American Indian Movement and bars and AA meetings all take a turn. There is even some fly fishing. How does it end? Who survives and who doesn't? No spoilers here.
Burke writes damaged people better than anyone, the flotsam and jetsam of humanity who nearly always have some redeeming feature. Not for Burke the black and white; only shades of gray. This, the third book in the series, introduces Dave's former partner, Clete Purcell, and a simply wonderful "loser" named Dixie Lee Pugh.
In this outing, Dave gets involved with the mob, oil lease scammers, Indian activists, a sociopath, and Clete's girlfriend, Darlene American Horse, and the story ranges from Bayou Teche to the Blackfoot Reservation in Montana.
In this outing, Dave gets involved with the mob, oil lease scammers, Indian activists, a sociopath, and Clete's girlfriend, Darlene American Horse, and the story ranges from Bayou Teche to the Blackfoot Reservation in Montana.
He writes beautifully, but this book was so violence that I'm going to have to take a break from this series for awhile. I read plenty of mysteries and thrillers, and violence doesn't usually bother me. But it was unrelenting and graphic in this book...and exhausting.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
These books are very dark. I enjoy reading about New Orleans and the Pan Handle places I have never lived. The descriptions are vivid. This book primarily takes place in Western Montana where I did live for a couple of years as a student and I loved visiting again through the authors descriptions. Reading James Lee Burke is like seeing a painting or eating a decadent desert. I will keep reading the Dave Robicheaux books.
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
There is really no doubt that James Lee Burke is one the better contemporary writers working today. His use of language is at times sublime. Burke has an amazing sense of place in his work, the South Louisiana Bayou spreads across your eyes like warm butter. Even with 'Black Cherry Blues' mostly set up north in Montana, Burke really brings the flat barren poverty ridden landscape to life.
Plot wise, Burke can also creates magic with his pen, though 'Black Cherry Blues' is a little more slower paced and tends to wrap itself in circles. Protagonist Dave Robicheaux is a complex soulful character who haunted by his past will usually get tangled back in it, by saying a wrong thing or beating up on the wrong person. But it is Robicheaux who keeps driving the plot, it is his drive, his sense of right and wrong and his daemons that provoke the other characters and events around him. Very Dickensian in a way, piling characters and events on on top of one another until something breaks and the plot moves along.
Not my favourite Robicheaux novel so far, but I always recommend Burke to anyone who will listen, he is an incredibly talented writer.
Plot wise, Burke can also creates magic with his pen, though 'Black Cherry Blues' is a little more slower paced and tends to wrap itself in circles. Protagonist Dave Robicheaux is a complex soulful character who haunted by his past will usually get tangled back in it, by saying a wrong thing or beating up on the wrong person. But it is Robicheaux who keeps driving the plot, it is his drive, his sense of right and wrong and his daemons that provoke the other characters and events around him. Very Dickensian in a way, piling characters and events on on top of one another until something breaks and the plot moves along.
Not my favourite Robicheaux novel so far, but I always recommend Burke to anyone who will listen, he is an incredibly talented writer.