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ROBICHEAUX
by James Lee Burke
Simon & Schuster, January 2018
445 pages
$27.99
ISBN: 1501176846


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

If you are looking for a ho-hum whodunit, with a straightforward plot and easily identified moral and immoral characters, this is not the book for you. If, however, you are looking for a writer whose use of language will make you gasp, a setting permeated with culture and history, and characters who will make you weep with their pain, do pick up ROBICHEAUX by James Lee Burke.

One of the issues that the reader will confront in this book is the sheer number of characters who play significant roles in this novel.

Detective Dave Robicheaux is still grieving over the death of his wife Molly in a tragic traffic accident two years ago when gangster and wanna-be movie producer Fat Tony Nemo tells him the other driver involved in the accident had killed a child in an accident some years back. Fat Tony is hoping to enlist Robicheaux's help in getting connected with Levon Broussard, a famed local author (and the husband of Rowena, a beautiful Australian woman) so that Tony can produce a movie based on his work. Other characters include Clete Purcell, Dave's former partner, fellow Vietnam vet and now a private detective who is probably Dave's best friend and his own worst enemy. One of my favorite characters is Jimmy Nightingale, who was born to a wealthy family and is now entering politics; he is a strangely seductive character who seems to be a cross between the demagogue/populist Huey Long and Donald Trump, and probably deserves his own novel. Kevin Penney, a lowlife who is connected to both Nightingale and Clete, is perhaps the most malevolent character in the book. Then there is Chester Wimple, a serial killer with a soft spot for children.

The Louisiana setting for this book is as important as any character: what is it about the Louisiana bayou that is so seductive that its major city, New Orleans, is known as the Big Easy? Is it the hot, humid climate? The legacy of slavery and oppression? The mixture of ethnicities?

There are a number of story lines in ROBICHEAUX (although I am compelled to warn you that the lines are not always resolved):

Whether or not Dave has anything to do with the death of the man responsible for Dave's wife's accident (even Dave doesn't know for sure as he was in an alcoholic blackout)

Was Rowena Broussard sexually assaulted by Jimmy Nightingale or by someone else?

There were murders committed in a previous Robicheaux work – will they be solved?

Who hired Chester the serial killer, and why?

Which characters are going to end up dead?

There are killings galore in this novel – even the most bloodthirsty reader will be sated. Yet the crimes themselves are in some ways the least interesting and/or important aspects to this work. There are questions of good and evil, of how past events are linked to the future, whether criminal acts are ever justified. There are some characters that seemed doomed to travel this world alone, incapable of sustaining intimate relationships. This would be a great read for book clubs with all of the material ready to be discussed.

That said, sometimes the book might have benefitted with a little judicious editing – there were some passages that were on the lengthy side. As someone who hadn't read any of the earlier Robicheaux novels, I had a little difficulty following the plot lines introduced in those works.

Yet I must also admit that now I am tempted to pick those books up.

§ Phyllis Onstad has been a writer, editor, civil servant, teacher and voracious reader. She currently lives in the California wine country.

Reviewed by Phyllis Onstad, January 2018

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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