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Fiction. Mystery. Thriller. HTML:In this Edgar Award-winning thriller, former Louisiana homicide cop Dave Robicheaux is trying to start a new life after the murder of his wife � but he can't escape his past forever. Dave Robicheaux was once a Louisiana homicide cop. Now he's trying to start a new life, opening up a fishing business and caring for his adopted girl, Alafair. Compared to Louisiana, Robicheaux thought Montana would be safe � until two Native American activists suddenly go missing. When Robicheaux begins investigating, he is led into the dark world of the Mafia and oil companies. At the same time, someone from his past comes back to haunt him. Someone who was responsible for Robicheaux's flight from New Orleans � someone who brutally murdered his wife � and now is after young Alafair... Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel, Black Cherry Blues spans from the mystical streets of New Orleans to the endless mountains of Montana, and ranks among James Lee Burke's finest work � an enduring classic, darkly beautiful and thrilling.… (more)
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The novel is set in the Cajun world of the Louisiana Bayous, which would appear to be brim full of psychopaths and sociopaths, only slightly less dangerous than the hills of Montana which is the other destination for this novel. Robicheaux, who is probably more sociopathic than psychopathic, fits into this world like a glove as he bullies his way to the stories inevitable conclusion. It is indeed a man’s world, a sort of survival of the fittest, where the only mature person that shows any love and affection is brutally murdered - well it just serves her right for being so soft. The novel is written in the first person and so it is an unrelenting tract featuring Robicheaux view of the world.
…ask yourself, have you ever known anyone whose marriage was saved by a marriage counselor, whose drinking was cured by a psychiatrist, whose son was kept out of a reform school by a social worker? In a badass, beer-glass brawl, would you rather have an academic liberal covering your back or a hobnailed redneck?”
But of course it is all OK because Robicheaux is a good catholic and he can find redemption by talking to and confessing to a local priest.
The novel was published in 1990 and so may be a fairly early example of a modern day cop thriller. The sort of thing that is made into endless American movies, where only the really tough survive and almost everybody else is a victim, and the institutions are so corrupt that the only way through is by doing “what a mans got to do”. No doubt more recent novelists have taken this genre to new heights by making the violence even more visceral, the cops even more corrupt and the politicians and power junkies even more manic. If they have I do not want to read them
On the plus side Burke writes well and does his best to avoid some of the clichés. His descriptions of the Bayou country are vivid and his use of metaphors can be inventive. He largely avoids the temptation to slip into porn when talking about his female characters but his insistence in describing in detail the clothes of the six year old Alafair is a little weird. Women are either whores or virgins and sexism abounds.
This book was chosen by a member of my book club who is visiting the U S A soon and was keen to read a novel to tie in with her trip. If I was her after reading this I would cancel the trip. No I did not like this book, all that machismo was too much for me. I can enjoy a trashy book if there is some humour, some interest or some wit but this stuff is just sick. 2 stars
The book opens with Dave having a flashback about the viscous murder of his wife Annie in the previous book. She and his father appear to him throughout the book. This book is more of a straight detective novel
Dave runs into an old friend of his from college, Dixie Lee Pugh. Dixie was a rock and roller until he went to prison for a DWI homicide and then he became just a drunk. Dave gets tied in with a couple acquaintances of Dixie's, Dalton Vidrine and Harry Mapes. Dixie tells Dave about two murders committed by Vidrine and Mapes. Dave thinks they have threatened Alafair so he wreaks some serious violence on both of them. The only problem is that after he leaves Dalton Vidrine gets murdered, probably by Mapes. Dave gets arrested and with Mapes testimony it looks like he is headed to Angola. So Dave gets out and decides to go after Mapes and get him for the murders Dixie told him about. Solve a crime so you don't go to jail.
To find Mapes, Dave and Alafair go to Montana. There he runs into Cletus who is working for Sally Dio a small time greaseball. Cletus is living with Darlene Desmarteau whose brother Clayton was one of the people Vidrine and Mapes murdered. The actions of the characters create a convoluted plot accompanied by Burke's quota of violence and murder.
The story is excellent with a frantic pace. The details are left for the reader to discover. Robicheaux's inner dialog is not as persistent as his later books. Burke's gift for description of the landscape and everything else has not yet blossomed. This book is a hard boiled gritty mystery where the plot and the Cajun flavor provide the entertainment.
I enjoyed the book very much. It is the kind of book you sit down to read and forget to get up until you are done. The Black Cherry blues is a song by Dixie Lee Pugh written in an isolation cell.
" You can toke, you can drop,
Drink or use.
It doesn't matter, daddy,
"Cause you're never gonna lose
Them mean old jailhouse
Black Cherry Blues."
**Haven't I read this before?
**Is it really possible for a middle-aged man to be simultaneously so superbutchtoughrowdy as Dave, and such a righteous
**Doesn't James Lee Burke look like a Stesoned Hobbit in his PR photos?
Okay, I'll just stop. I know this series has many devoted fans, and deservedly so, I guess, but I just can't seem to connect with it.
Back Cover Blurb:
Personal tragedy has left Dave Robicheaux close to the edge. Battling against his old addiction
Robicheaux reluctantly agrees to help out his old friend but becomes more involved than he bargained for when he finds himself suspect Number One in a series of bloody killings. Forced to leave his home, Robicheaux's precarious existence reaches breaking point when Alafair's life is threatened.
The author, however, is too descriptive. Yeah, I know, books are supposed to be somewhat
There's some action, but it's so buried inside of the environmental descriptions and the "flashbacks" to falling-down-drunk-Dave that it's hard to find sometimes.
And I can't figure out why the author is obsessed with using the word Negro as an adjective. I know it's a late-80s book, but still, does it matter what race the waitress or the gardener or the guy driving by in his car is? Not to the plot anyway, but the author made a point of telling us every time someone was not of Western European descent.
But... I'll keep reading the series because there is some rough-n-tumble going on here, and some outside the rules justice... which is what I'm looking for.
However, having spent several
One day, Robicheaux runs into an old classmate -- sort of a Jerry Lee Lewis type who's been through some hard times, mostly caused by his own actions. Later Dixie Lee, for that is his name, contacts Robicheaux with a concern. He's overheard two co-workers in the oil leasing business discussing what he believes to have been a double murder. Robicheaux doesn't really want to get involved, but almost before he knows it he's been charged with the murder of one of the suspected killers -- a murder he knows he didn't commit. The ramifications of the case take him and Alafair to Montana, where he runs into another old friend -- his former, now disgraced, police partner Clete. Dave Robicheaux must investigate the case, involving Mafiosos, Indians, drugs, and oil leases, keep his adopted daughter safe, and make it back to Louisiana in time for his court date. It's a thrilling story.
This book is an interesting combination of extreme violence and lyrical nature description, the toughmindedness of an AA stalwart and the tenderness of a man learning to be a father to a traumatized little girl. I highly recommend it to anyone who is able to bear the descriptions of violence.
Dave's troubled college roommate Dixie Lee Pugh tells him that he (Dixie) overheard two men discussing two men they murdered in Montana.
When Dave checks into it, the two men become
We follow Dave's actions as he travels to Montana. He runs into his old homicide partner Clete Purcel who is currently working for a minor gangster, Sallie "Sal" Dio. Sallie has Dixie Lee purchasing land deeds and there is a conflict with AIM, the American Indian Movement.
Dixie is an interesting character who is an accomplished musician and tells of being such places as Brooklyn, New York where he appeared at a concert with Chuck Berry. Clete Purcell is memorable for his idiosyncrasies and loved for his fierce loyalty to Dave. Dave's adopted daughter, Alafair, is a sweetheart. She wonders why her fellow students and teachers think it's odd that she speaks with a Creole dialect.
Dave Robicheaux is a troubled character who fights against his alcoholism, his bouts of rage, and his torment of letting down people in his past such as his murdered wife.
Burke is one of our most talented suspense writers. "Black Cherry Blues" was his first commercial success. Dave is a defender of the defenseless and is often pitted against big business and governmental bureaucracy.
He's also a highly literate author.
where his murder charge is resolved (are you really surprised) in the midst of Native Americans fighting against a land hungry oil company (that’s probably a redundancy).
There was something a bit off about this novel. Perhaps it was that Dave was no longer in Louisiana; perhaps it was the -- to my mind -- excessive guilt-ridden self-examination that seems more a plea for forgiveness from others than seeking to understand himself; perhaps it was the excessively slow cadence of the reader who I normally like very much (Will Patton); perhaps it was the implausible plot and would you take your six-year-old daughter on a dangerous mission? or, perhaps it was that I didn’t get the same sense of place that usually pervades Burke’s Louisiana Robicheax novels. Then again it might have been the outrageous way he solves the case.
Personally, had I been the social worker, there is no way I would ever have placed Alifair with Dave given the level of violence with which he surrounds himself.
But he does write beautifully.
Haunted by the memory of his wife's murder and his father's untimely death, ex-New Orleans cop Dave Robicheaux spends his days in a fish-and-tackle business. But when an old friend makes a surprise appearance,
Black Cherry begins down in the bayou and ends there, but most of the action takes place in the mountains out west. Robicheaux runs into some old acquaintances and quickly gets mixed into a complicated situation with a couple really bad dudes who threaten his little daughter. That's too much for Robicheaux, a man of action if there ever was one, so he takes matters into his own hands and beats the crap out of both of them. However, one of the guys takes the opportunity to kill his fellow miscreant in a way that makes it appear Robicheaux did the murder. Dave's arrested, manages to get himself released on bond, and travels west with his daughter to track down the real murderer before he finds himself in prison among a population he, in many cases, helped put there. Early on and throughout the story Dave is helped by a Federal agent tracking the crew, his former partner on the New Orleans police force is likewise thoroughly involved in the action, and things get even more complex as Mafia characters are encountered and enmeshed in various conspiracies. Robicheaux nearly runs out of time before his murder trial, but a solution comes to him in a dream and things end up working out.
Robicheaux is a fantastic character, a tough recovering alcoholic Vietnam vet ex-cop with a highly developed conscience and a bias toward action, sometimes violent action. He's respectful toward women but has experienced tough luck (and then some) on the romantic side. Since his retirement from the force, he runs a bait shop in a little town on the bayou where he tries, unsuccessfully so far, to lead a quiet life. One interesting aspect of the series is the glimpse we get into 80's-era policing, racial issues, and other societal topics that are still relevant and evolving today. It's fascinating stuff.
The real 'star' of the series, though, is Burke's writing. He can paint a picture like no other in this genre, he's great with dialogue, he's not averse to using unique devices like dream passages in his stories, and his pacing is excellent. I'm not sure where this series is heading but I'm sure happy I jumped on the bus to find out.
Burke is a phenomenal writer, and can evoke a mood, or an atmosphere, or a locale with ease. His characters are complex, emotional beings. But, while the author (thankfully) didn't have Robicheaux fall off the
I won't really get into the plot stuff, because I'd prefer to stay away from spoilers. But I have to say, I got very sick of all the dream sequences with his dead wife.
Having said that, I'll still read a substandard novel by Burke over a lot of other authors' finest works.