Jolie Blon's Bounce

Starred review from April 22, 2002
To read a Burke novel is to enter a timeless, parallel universe of violent emotions and lush, brooding landscapes, where class and racial distinctions and family histories mold society. This is the stunningly talented Burke's 21st book and his best—until the next one. Dave Robicheaux, the psychologically scarred detective for the New Iberia, La., sheriff's department, investigates two brutal murders, one of a naïve teenage girl, the other of a feckless drug-addled prostitute. The author provides a dense, richly imagined background for his characters, especially the sinister ones: malevolent Legion Guidry, a nightmarish figure from Robicheaux's boyhood; a power-hungry tavern owner; an arrogant lawyer; a combative female PI; the prostitute's Mafioso father; and Marvin Oates, an enigmatic Bible salesman who floats ominously through the narrative. Robicheaux doesn't believe the obvious suspect—Tee Bobby Hulin, a drug-addicted musical genius—is the murderer. Aided and disrupted by his obstreperous pal, Clete Purcel, Robicheaux runs into the usual trouble. Legion gives Robicheaux such a ferocious beating that he reverts to drinking and addictive painkillers. Though the search for the murderer moves the story, the novel is really an examination of the savage relationships of the characters and the palpable presence of the past. Burke offers a vivid social history of an inbred, corrupt place. As Clete so aptly tells his friend, "This is Louisiana, Dave. Guatemala North. Quit pretending it's the United States." (June 10)Forecast:Expect another bestseller from two-time Edgar Award winner Burke, who should be attracting more readers of "literary" fiction with his fine writing.

February 15, 2002
More Louisiana fare. Burke brings back Dave Robicheaux, who comes up against various squalid types while defending a sorry loser against an unjust murder charge.

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2002
Burke does terrific bad guys, spiritual descendants of Max Cady, as played by Robert Mitchum in the 1962 version of " Cape Fear." Dave Robicheaux, Burke's Cajun detective and the hero of 10 previous installments in this much-acclaimed series, has tackled an impressively evil crew of sociopaths over the years, many of whom have been fat cats with well-hidden bent streaks. This time, though, Burke looks to the lower depths to find his villain, and the creature that emerges, as if from some primordial swamp, strikes a new kind of fear in everyone he encounters. The mysterious, seemingly indestructible Legion Guidry, once the overseer on a Louisiana plantation, where he raped numerous field hands, has resurfaced near New Iberia and may be linked to the murder of a teenager and a prostitute. Convinced that the drug-addicted blues singer under arrest for the first killing is innocent, Robicheaux goes after Guidry and winds up taking the most humiliating beating of his life at the hands of a man purported to be 75 years old. The particulars of who killed who are eventually sorted out, but the real drama this time comes in Robicheaux's chilling encounter with evil and his recognition of his own fear. The satanic Guidry--hints of otherworldliness are sprinkled throughout the text--is as compelling a bad guy as any in literature; like Mitchum as Cady, he reminds us in the most visceral of ways that the world can be an utterly alien place. The sights, sounds, and tastes of Cajun country, which provide the familiar ambience in the Robicheaux series, are not absent this time, but they are overwhelmed by the subhuman stench of pure malevolence. An atypical entry in the series, then, but a compelling one.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)