Mystery Monday: James Lee Burke
--by Hanje Richards
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Because I am a huge mystery fan, "Mystery Monday" was born. Because I like to read mysteries in order, I'm going to list and talk about them in chronological, rather than alphabetical, order. And, because we started celebrating and posting about Banned Books Week on Monday, "Mystery Monday" is appearing on Tuesday (mystery solved!).
Because I am a huge mystery fan, "Mystery Monday" was born. Because I like to read mysteries in order, I'm going to list and talk about them in chronological, rather than alphabetical, order. And, because we started celebrating and posting about Banned Books Week on Monday, "Mystery Monday" is appearing on Tuesday (mystery solved!).
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If an author has written more than one series (and many authors have), I'll talk about different series in different posts to keep things as clear as possible. For those interested in reading some of the featured titles, I've noted at the end of each book's summary whether it's available at the Copper Queen Library or at another library in Cochise County through Interlibrary Loan (ILL).
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Today's fe
atured mystery writer is James Lee Burke (born December 5, 1936), an American author best known for his Dave Robicheaux series. He won an Edgar Award for Black Cherry Blues (1990).
atured mystery writer is James Lee Burke (born December 5, 1936), an American author best known for his Dave Robicheaux series. He won an Edgar Award for Black Cherry Blues (1990)..
Burke was born in Houston, Texas, but spent most of his childhood on the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast. He attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and University of Missouri, receiving a BA and MA from the latter. He has worked in a wide variety of industries over the years, including oil, journalism, and social care. He taught for the creative writing program at Wichita State University during the '80s, shortly before resettling in Montana.
Burke was born in Houston, Texas, but spent most of his childhood on the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast. He attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and University of Missouri, receiving a BA and MA from the latter. He has worked in a wide variety of industries over the years, including oil, journalism, and social care. He taught for the creative writing program at Wichita State University during the '80s, shortly before resettling in Montana.
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Burke owns homes with his wife, Pearl, in Lolo, Montana, and New Iberia, Louisiana. They have four children, including their daughter Alafair Burke, who is also a prominent crime writer. They also have four grandsons.
Burke owns homes with his wife, Pearl, in Lolo, Montana, and New Iberia, Louisiana. They have four children, including their daughter Alafair Burke, who is also a prominent crime writer. They also have four grandsons.
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Dave Robicheaux Series: Who Is Robicheaux?
Dave Robicheaux Series: Who Is Robicheaux?
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Once an officer for the New Orleans police department, Dave Robicheaux constantly breaches the ethical code over the course of just about every case he works on – seemingly without consequence – and currently pursues cases in New Iberia, Louisiana as sheriff's deputy. He is a recovering alcoholic whose demons stem from his service in the Vietnam War and his impoverished difficult childhood in rural Louisiana; his mother abandoned the family (and was later murdered) and his father died in an oil rig explosion.
Once an officer for the New Orleans police department, Dave Robicheaux constantly breaches the ethical code over the course of just about every case he works on – seemingly without consequence – and currently pursues cases in New Iberia, Louisiana as sheriff's deputy. He is a recovering alcoholic whose demons stem from his service in the Vietnam War and his impoverished difficult childhood in rural Louisiana; his mother abandoned the family (and was later murdered) and his father died in an oil rig explosion.
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He still experiences periods of savage depression and nightmares, which are only exacerbated by the murder of his wife Anne Ballard, a social worker. Recently, he has married Bootsie, a mobster's widow and lupus sufferer, and adopted the El Salvadorian orphan Alafair (the namesake of Burke's own daughter) after he saves her from the wreckage of an airplane.
He still experiences periods of savage depression and nightmares, which are only exacerbated by the murder of his wife Anne Ballard, a social worker. Recently, he has married Bootsie, a mobster's widow and lupus sufferer, and adopted the El Salvadorian orphan Alafair (the namesake of Burke's own daughter) after he saves her from the wreckage of an airplane.
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His best friend is the violent, alcoholic ex-police officer and private investigator/bail-bondsman Cletus Purcel.
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His best friend is the violent, alcoholic ex-police officer and private investigator/bail-bondsman Cletus Purcel.
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The Neon Rain (1987) - Detective Dave Robicheaux has fought too many battles: in Vietnam, with killers and hustlers, with police brass, and the bottle. Robicheaux's haunted soul mirrors the intensity and dusky mystery of New Orleans' French Quarter – the place he calls home, and the place that nearly destroys him when he becomes involved in the case of a young prostitute whose body is found in a bayou. Thrust into the world of drug lords and arms smugglers, Robicheaux must face down a subterranean criminal world and come to terms with his own bruised heart in order to survive. (Available at CQL).
Heaven's Prisoners (1988) - Vietnam vet Dave Robicheaux has turned in his detective's badge, is winning his battle against booze, and has left New Orleans with his wife for the tranquil beauty of Louisiana's bayous. But a plane crash on the Gulf brings a young girl into his life – and with her comes a netherworld of murder, deception, and homegrown crime. Suddenly Robicheaux is confronting Bubba Rocque, a brutal hood he's known since childhood; Rocque's hungry Cajun wife; and a federal agent with more guts than sense. In a backwater world where a swagger and a gun go further than the law, Robicheaux and those he loves are caught on a tide of violence far bigger than them all. (Available through ILL)
Heaven's Prisoners (1988) - Vietnam vet Dave Robicheaux has turned in his detective's badge, is winning his battle against booze, and has left New Orleans with his wife for the tranquil beauty of Louisiana's bayous. But a plane crash on the Gulf brings a young girl into his life – and with her comes a netherworld of murder, deception, and homegrown crime. Suddenly Robicheaux is confronting Bubba Rocque, a brutal hood he's known since childhood; Rocque's hungry Cajun wife; and a federal agent with more guts than sense. In a backwater world where a swagger and a gun go further than the law, Robicheaux and those he loves are caught on a tide of violence far bigger than them all. (Available through ILL)
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Black Cherry Blues (1989) - Ex-cop Dave Robicheaux: His wife had been murdered... Now they're after his little girl... From the Louisiana bayou to Montana's tribal lands, he's running from the bottle, a homicide rap, a professional killer... and the demons of his past. (Available through ILL)
Black Cherry Blues (1989) - Ex-cop Dave Robicheaux: His wife had been murdered... Now they're after his little girl... From the Louisiana bayou to Montana's tribal lands, he's running from the bottle, a homicide rap, a professional killer... and the demons of his past. (Available through ILL)
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A Morning for Flamingos (1990) – Clutching the shards of his shattered life, Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux has rejoined the New lberia police force. His partner is dead – slain during a condemned prisoner's bloody flight to freedom that left Robicheaux critically wounded... and reawakened the ghost of his haunted, violent past. Now he's trailing a killer into the sordid heart of the Big Easy – caught up in the lethal undercurrents of a mob double-cross and confronting his most dangerous enemy: himself (Available through ILL)
A Morning for Flamingos (1990) – Clutching the shards of his shattered life, Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux has rejoined the New lberia police force. His partner is dead – slain during a condemned prisoner's bloody flight to freedom that left Robicheaux critically wounded... and reawakened the ghost of his haunted, violent past. Now he's trailing a killer into the sordid heart of the Big Easy – caught up in the lethal undercurrents of a mob double-cross and confronting his most dangerous enemy: himself (Available through ILL)
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A Sta
ined White Radiance (1992) – Sadistic villains and interior demons plague Cajun police detective Dave Robicheaux as the murder of a local cop draws him into the painful conflicts of the Sonnier family, with whom he grew up near the bayous. Weldon Sonnier, an oil speculator perhaps involvedwith organized crime in New Orleans, is married to the sister of racist Louisiana politician Bobby Earl; Lyle Sonnier is a televangelist with a widely publicized gift of healing that antagonizes the detective, whose wife has lupus; Weldon and Lyle's sister, Drew, whom Robicheaux loved as a teenager, is New Iberia's liberal eccentric. Harshly abused as children, the Sonniers exert a strong pull on Robicheaux, whose desire to help pits him and his former New Orleans police department partner Cletus Purcel against southern Louisiana's fierce Mafia leader and his hired thugs, one of whom, Robicheauxobserves, has a face with the "moral depth and complexity of freshly poured cement." (Available at CQL)
A Sta
ined White Radiance (1992) – Sadistic villains and interior demons plague Cajun police detective Dave Robicheaux as the murder of a local cop draws him into the painful conflicts of the Sonnier family, with whom he grew up near the bayous. Weldon Sonnier, an oil speculator perhaps involvedwith organized crime in New Orleans, is married to the sister of racist Louisiana politician Bobby Earl; Lyle Sonnier is a televangelist with a widely publicized gift of healing that antagonizes the detective, whose wife has lupus; Weldon and Lyle's sister, Drew, whom Robicheaux loved as a teenager, is New Iberia's liberal eccentric. Harshly abused as children, the Sonniers exert a strong pull on Robicheaux, whose desire to help pits him and his former New Orleans police department partner Cletus Purcel against southern Louisiana's fierce Mafia leader and his hired thugs, one of whom, Robicheauxobserves, has a face with the "moral depth and complexity of freshly poured cement." (Available at CQL).
In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (1993) - Haunted by the reemergence of a forty-year-old unsolved murder, detective Dave Robicheaux must also contend with a spate of serial killings of prostitutes and local dissension about the movie company that is shooting in town. (Available through ILL)
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In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (1993) - Haunted by the reemergence of a forty-year-old unsolved murder, detective Dave Robicheaux must also contend with a spate of serial killings of prostitutes and local dissension about the movie company that is shooting in town. (Available through ILL)
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Dixie City Jam (1994) - Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux matches wits with neo-Nazi psychopath Will Buchalter to find a sunken German submarine, while a Mafia war explodes in New Orleans. (Available at CQL)
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Burning Angel (1995) - Helping the Fontenot family of sharecroppers from being forced away from their longtime home, detective Dave Robicheaux discovers a link between the eviction and the murder of a New Orleans fixer's girlfriend. (Available at CQL)
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Cadillac Jukebox (1996) - When former Klansman and piney-woods outcast Aaron Crown is finally imprisoned for a decades-old murder, it is to Detective Dave Robicheaux that he proclaims his innocence loudest. Crown seems to be a lightning rod for every kind of trouble that the state of Louisiana can unearth. A documentary film writer seeking to prove Crown's innocence is found murdered; a button man for the New Orleans mob accuses Robicheaux of taking a pay-off to ignore Crown. But it is when Buford LaRose – scion of an old Southern family and author of a book on the Crown case – is elected governor that Dave Robicheaux's involvement with Aaron Crown deepens to a level he can barely fathom. And it is Buford's social-climbing wife, Karyn, with whom Robicheaux had an affair years before, who proves to be his most poisonous adversary. (Available at CQL)
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Cadillac Jukebox (1996) - When former Klansman and piney-woods outcast Aaron Crown is finally imprisoned for a decades-old murder, it is to Detective Dave Robicheaux that he proclaims his innocence loudest. Crown seems to be a lightning rod for every kind of trouble that the state of Louisiana can unearth. A documentary film writer seeking to prove Crown's innocence is found murdered; a button man for the New Orleans mob accuses Robicheaux of taking a pay-off to ignore Crown. But it is when Buford LaRose – scion of an old Southern family and author of a book on the Crown case – is elected governor that Dave Robicheaux's involvement with Aaron Crown deepens to a level he can barely fathom. And it is Buford's social-climbing wife, Karyn, with whom Robicheaux had an affair years before, who proves to be his most poisonous adversary. (Available at CQL)
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Sunset Limited (1998) - The townspeople of New Iberia, Louisiana, didn't crucify Megan Flynn's father. They just didn't catch whoever pinned him to a barn wall with sixteen-penny nails. Decades later, Megan, now a world-famous photojournalist, has come back to the bayou, looking for cop Dave Robicheaux. It was Dave who found the body of labor leader Jack Flynn. The sight changed the boy, shaped him as a man. And after forty years, Robicheaux is still haunted by the bizarre unsolved slaying. Now Megan's return has stirred up the ghosts of the long-buried past, igniting a storm of violence that will rip apart lives of blacks and whites in this bayou county. And for a good cop with bad memories, hard desires, and chilling nightmares, the time has come to uncover the truth. (Available at CQL)
Sunset Limited (1998) - The townspeople of New Iberia, Louisiana, didn't crucify Megan Flynn's father. They just didn't catch whoever pinned him to a barn wall with sixteen-penny nails. Decades later, Megan, now a world-famous photojournalist, has come back to the bayou, looking for cop Dave Robicheaux. It was Dave who found the body of labor leader Jack Flynn. The sight changed the boy, shaped him as a man. And after forty years, Robicheaux is still haunted by the bizarre unsolved slaying. Now Megan's return has stirred up the ghosts of the long-buried past, igniting a storm of violence that will rip apart lives of blacks and whites in this bayou county. And for a good cop with bad memories, hard desires, and chilling nightmares, the time has come to uncover the truth. (Available at CQL)
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Purple Cane Road (2000) -
Robicheaux first hears it from a pimp eager to trade information for his life: Mae Guillory was murdered outside a New Orleans nightclub by two cops. Dave Robicheaux was just a boy when his mother ran out on him and his whiskey-driven father. Now Robicheaux is a man, still haunted by her desertion and her death. More than thirty-five years after Mae Guillory died, her son will go to any length to bring her killers to justice. And as he moves closer to what happened that long-ago night, the Louisiana cop crosses lines of color and class to find the place where secrets of his past lie buried... and where all roads lead to revenge – but only one road leads to the truth... (Available at CQL)
Purple Cane Road (2000) -
Robicheaux first hears it from a pimp eager to trade information for his life: Mae Guillory was murdered outside a New Orleans nightclub by two cops. Dave Robicheaux was just a boy when his mother ran out on him and his whiskey-driven father. Now Robicheaux is a man, still haunted by her desertion and her death. More than thirty-five years after Mae Guillory died, her son will go to any length to bring her killers to justice. And as he moves closer to what happened that long-ago night, the Louisiana cop crosses lines of color and class to find the place where secrets of his past lie buried... and where all roads lead to revenge – but only one road leads to the truth... (Available at CQL).
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Jolie Blon's Bounce (2002) - New Iberia, Louisiana, is reeling from a one-two punch of brutal rape-homicides, and drug-addicted blues singer Tee Bobby Hulin has been tagged as the prime suspect. No stranger to bucking popular opinion, police detective Dave Robicheaux senses it's not Hulin behind the atrocities. But while placating a town on fire for swift revenge, Robicheaux must face his own demons – an ultimate reckoning with Legion Guidry, a diabolical figure whose hardcore brand of violence left Robicheaux humiliated and addicted to painkillers. With his longtime friend, the boozing and womanizing Clete Purcel, Robicheaux treads among land mines of injustice, mob payoffs, and deadly secrets, all the while guessing: whom can he trust – and whom should he fear? (Available at CQL)
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Last Car t
o Elysian Fields (2003) - For Dave Robicheaux, there is no easy passage home. New Orleans, and the memories of his life in the Big Easy, will always haunt him. So to return there means visiting old ghosts, exposing old wounds, opening himself up to new, yet familiar, dangers. When Robicheaux, now a police officer based in the somewhat quieter Louisiana town of New Iberia, learns that an old friend, Father Jimmie Dolan, a Catholic priest always at the center of controversy, has been the victim of a particularly brutal assault, he knows he has to return to New Orleans to investigate, if only unofficially. What he doesn't realize is that in doing so he is inviting into his life – and into the lives of those around him – an ancestral evil that could destroy them all. (Available at CQL)
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Last Car t
o Elysian Fields (2003) - For Dave Robicheaux, there is no easy passage home. New Orleans, and the memories of his life in the Big Easy, will always haunt him. So to return there means visiting old ghosts, exposing old wounds, opening himself up to new, yet familiar, dangers. When Robicheaux, now a police officer based in the somewhat quieter Louisiana town of New Iberia, learns that an old friend, Father Jimmie Dolan, a Catholic priest always at the center of controversy, has been the victim of a particularly brutal assault, he knows he has to return to New Orleans to investigate, if only unofficially. What he doesn't realize is that in doing so he is inviting into his life – and into the lives of those around him – an ancestral evil that could destroy them all. (Available at CQL).
Crusader's Cross (2005) - For detective Dave Robicheaux, memories – including those of a strange and violent summer from his youth – are best left alone. But a dying man's confession forces Robicheaux to resurrect a decades-old mystery with a missing woman at its heart. Her name may or may not have been Ida Durbin, and Robicheaux's half brother, Jimmie, paid a brutal price for entering her world. Now the truth will plunge Robicheaux into the manipulations of New Orleans' wealthiest family, into a complex love affair of his own, and into hot pursuit of a killer expanding his territory beyond the Big Easy at a frightening pace. (Available at CQL.
Pegasus Descending (2006) - When a nice young woman named Trish Klein blows into Louisiana passing hundred-dollar bills in local casinos, detective Dave Robicheaux senses a storm bearing down on his new life of contentment... Twenty-five years ago, lost in a drunken haze in Florida, Robicheaux was too far gone to save his friend and fellow 'Nam vet Dallas Klein, murdered in cold blood for gambling debts. Now, the arrival of Dallas' daughter opens a door locked long ago, and extracting her motives points Robicheaux to the suicide of a local "good girl" pulled into a vortex of power, sex, and death. It's Robicheaux's most personally painful case – a roller coaster of passion, surprise, and regret – and it may be his deadliest. (Available through ILL)
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The Tin Roof Blowdown (2007) – Hurricane Katrina has left the commercial district and residential neighborhoods awash with looters and predators of every stripe. The power grid of the city has been destroyed, New Orleans reduced to the level of a medieval society. There is no law, no order, nosanctuary for the infirm, the helpless, and the innocent. Bodies float in the streets and lie impaled on the branches of flooded trees. In the midst of an apocalyptical nightmare, Robicheaux must find two serial rapists, a morphine-addicted priest, and a vigilante who may be more dangerous than the criminals looting the city. (Available at CQL)
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Swan Peak (2008) - Detective Robicheaux is far from his New Iberia roots, attempting to relax in the untouched wilderness of rural Montana. He, his wife, and his buddy Clete Purcel have retreated to stay at an old friend's ranch, hoping to spend their days fishing and enjoying their distance from theharsh, gritty landscape of Louisiana post-Katrina. But the serenity is soon shattered when two college students are found brutally murdered in the hills behind where the Robicheauxs and Purcel are staying. They quickly find themselves involved in a twisted and dangerous mystery involving a wealthy, vicious oil tycoon, his deformed brother and beautiful wife, a sexually deviant minister, an escaped con and former country music star, and a vigilante Texas gunbull out for blood. At the center of the storm is Clete, who cannot shake the feeling that he is being haunted by the ghosts from his past – namely Sally Dio, the mob boss he'd sabotaged and killed years before. (Available through ILL)
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The Glass Rainbow (2010) - Seven young women in neighboring Jefferson Davis Parish have been brutally murdered. While the crimes have all the telltale signs of a serial killer, the death of Bernadette Latiolais, a high school honor student, doesn’t fit: she is not the kind of hapless and marginalizedvictim psychopaths usually prey upon. Robicheaux and his best fr
iend, Clete Purcel, confront Herman Stanga, a notorious pimp and crack dealer whom both men despise. When Stanga turns up dead shortly after a fierce beating by Purcel, in front of numerous witnesses, the case takes a nasty turn, and Clete’s career and life are hanging by threads over the abyss.
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The Glass Rainbow (2010) - Seven young women in neighboring Jefferson Davis Parish have been brutally murdered. While the crimes have all the telltale signs of a serial killer, the death of Bernadette Latiolais, a high school honor student, doesn’t fit: she is not the kind of hapless and marginalizedvictim psychopaths usually prey upon. Robicheaux and his best fr
iend, Clete Purcel, confront Herman Stanga, a notorious pimp and crack dealer whom both men despise. When Stanga turns up dead shortly after a fierce beating by Purcel, in front of numerous witnesses, the case takes a nasty turn, and Clete’s career and life are hanging by threads over the abyss. .
Adding to Robicheaux’s troubles is the matter of his daughter, Alafair, on leave from Stanford Law to put the finishing touches on her novel. Her literary pursuit has led her into the arms of Kermit Abelard, celebrated novelist and scion of a once prominent Louisiana family whose fortunes are slowly sinking into the corruption of Louisiana’s subculture. Abelard’s association with bestselling ex-convict author Robert Weingart, a man who uses and discards people like Kleenex, causes Robicheaux to fear that Alafair might be destroyed by the man she loves. As his daughter seems to drift away from him, he wonders if he has become a victim of his own paranoia. But as usual, Robicheaux’s instincts are proven correct and he finds himself dealing with a level of evil that is greater than any enemy he has confronted in the past. (Available through ILL)
posted by msbw @ 8:32 PM
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