Creole Belle

Starred review from May 21, 2012
MWA Grand Master Burke continues to raise the bar for himself, and the reader, as shown by his lyrical, insightful 19th Dave Robicheaux novel (after 2010’s The Glass Rainbow). While the New Iberia, La., deputy sheriff is recovering in a New Orleans hospital from a bullet wound, he receives a visit from Cajun singer Tee Jolie Melton, who leaves him an iPod loaded with music, including the blues song “My Creole Belle.” Only thing is, Tee Jolie supposedly disappeared months earlier, and her teenage sister, Blue Melton, has just turned up frozen in a block of ice. Meanwhile, Clete Purcel, Robicheaux’s hard-drinking best friend, has problems of his own: some local wise guys are trying to blackmail him, and he fears his lost daughter, Gretchen, may be a notorious assassin. As Robicheaux and Purcel suit up again to take on an array of foes, including corrupt politicians, oil men, and a wealthy old man they suspect is a Nazi war criminal, they feel the weight of their own history, and begin to hear the ghostly whisper of mortality. This is another stunner from a modern master. Agent: Philip Spitzer, Philip G. Spitzer Literary Agency.

June 15, 2012
Great news for readers who feared that Burke had left Iberia Parish Sheriff's Deputy Dave Robicheaux dying at the end of The Glass Rainbow (2010); Dave and his old friend Clete Purcel are back for an even more heaven-storming round of homicide, New Orleans-style. No one else sees or hears Cajun singer Tee Jolie Melton when she appears to Dave in the dead of night and leaves behind the gift of an iPad whose playlist includes three of her songs nobody else can find. Maybe Dave's drug-fevered brain has only imagined her appearance. But there's no question about what's become of Tee Jolie's sister Blue, who washes ashore encased in a bathtub-sized block of ice, dead of a heroin overdose, a note she's hidden in her mouth announcing, "My sister is alive." Dave and Clete are swiftly pulled into the disappearance of the two sisters by Bix Golightly, who demands $30,000 from Clete for a 20-year-old gambling marker he bought from gangster Frankie Giacano. Bad move. In short order, Bix, his hired muscle Waylon Grimes and Frankie are all murdered. In fact, Clete actually sees Bix's executioner, a contract killer code-named Caruso, who, he tells Dave, is actually Gretchen Horowitz, the illegitimate daughter who never knew her father. Clete's unwanted knowledge of Gretchen's guilt strains her growing friendship with both Clete and Dave's daughter Alafair. Balancing the latest chapter of his heroes' struggles to do the right thing is Burke's unsparing anatomy of the monstrous Dupree family: Pierre, who owns an ad agency; his estranged wife Varina, Clete's ex-lover; and Pierre's grandfather, Alexis, a concentration camp survivor. As if all the complications aren't enough, Burke, in his latest attempt to outdo himself, ties the Gulf oil spill to art fraud, sexual slavery and Nazis. A darkly magnificent treat for Dave's legion of admirers, though not the best place for newcomers to begin.

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February 15, 2012

In a recovery unit in New Orleans, where we left him in The Glass Rainbow, Dave Robicheaux is visited by Tee Jolie Melton, who brings him an iPod including the song "Creole Belle"--and promptly disappears. Dave goes looking for her but instead finds her sister, encased in a block of ice floating (and likely melting fast) in the gulf. Then there's an oil-rig blowout. Get multiples.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2012
When we last saw Dave Robicheaux, in The Glass Rainbow (2010), he was near death, as was his best friend, Clete Purcell, after a shoot-out on Bayou Teche. As this latest Robicheaux novel begins, Dave is still recovering from his wounds in the hospital. Mortality hangs heavily over both Dave and Clete once again, as the so-called Bobbsey Twins try to rally their flagging forces for another go-around with the forces of evil. It begins when Dave gets a visit in the middle of the night from Tee Jolie Melton, a Cajun singer who claims to have fallen in with a bad man and is worried for her life. But was Tee Jolie really there, or did Dave, still on morphine, imagine the whole thing? The plot thickens when Tee Jolie's sister is murdered, and a mysterious woman, who may have shocking ties to Clete, appears to be killing low-level mobsters in New Orleans. This tale plays out much like The Glass Rainbowintimations of mortality; melancholic musing on the pillaging of once-Edenic South Louisiana; cathartic, guns-blazing climaxbut, as always, Burke brings something new to the table, this time in his introduction of significant new characters (the mysterious hit woman) and in his deepening treatment of familiar figures (Clete Purcell has grown from a roughneck sidekick to a figure nearly as complex and fascinating as Dave himself). Dave and Clete may still be unbowed, but they are certainly brokenand all the more interesting for it: We were out-of-step and out-of-sync with the world and with ourselves, and knowing this we held on to each other like two men in a gale, the fire burning so brightly behind us that the backs of our necks glowed with the heat. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A new Dave Robicheaux novel is always front-page news in the mystery world, and Burke's publisher will respond accordingly.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)