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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
Another Robicheaux. Again., 19 Sep 2002
I used to look forward to the next Dave Robicheaux book like I looked forward to Christmas when I was a child. I used to feel the same anticipation, the same thrill I would feel upon waking too early to go into the living room to see what Santa had brought. I would buy the new James Lee Burke novel and rush to get it home, sneaking looks at the dust jacket, reading the first few pages while waiting in line to get on the bus and finally arriving home to immerse myself. They were wonderful, yes, well-written and poetic, with a dark, malevolent beauty hiding beneath the rot and detritus of the swamps and rural backwaters, but they were more than that. They were like mini-trips to Louisiana for me, a place I love and visit whenever I can. And they were a new treat from a favorite author, something that was new to me, as many of the writers I discovered in my youth were long dead and would be producing no more books.These days, a new Dave Robicheaux novel is like a phone call from a distant aunt. It's nice to hear from her, but she keeps telling the same old stories over and over again and you wind up preferring that maybe the calls were less frequent, or of shorter duration. "Jolie Blon's Bounce" is like that. It's still Burke and it's still welcome, but you've heard all the stories, read all the lovely descriptions, wondered about the vaguely supernatural elements, thrilled at Dave's headstrong determination to do exactly the most self-destructive thing at any given moment, despite what his family, friends and colleagues tell him. There's nothing new. The story is about a poor black person accused of a crime and the rich white people who have a dark secret and may actually be the criminals. No, wait. That's ALL of them. Let's try it again... "Jolie Blon's Bounce" finds Dave investigating the murders of a young, white, teenaged girl and of a prostitute, the daughter of a New Orleans gangster. Everyone figures local hophead and musician Tee Bobby Hulin as the murderer; everyone except Dave, who wants so much to believe in the boy's innocence that he follows a few unorthodox leads. Along the way he encounters Legion Guidry, a former plantation manager who may or may not be the demon Legion from the Bible, a man who violates and twists his way through New Iberia like a thread of mold. He threatens, bullies, beats and kills any number of people before turning his charms on Dave himself, who nearly does not come away from the encounter intact. Throw in Clete Purcell, Dave's old partner, the Private Investigator daughter of another mobster, a malevolent Bible salesman, the prostitute's grieving father, the local police, and Dave's curiously bitchy family and you have a nice, murky roux, full of red herrings, macguffins and dead ends. As usual, Dave sews it all up in his unique, ethically challenged way. But what has begun to strike me about these books is how surly and dislikeable is the lead character. Dave barely communicates his thoughts to anyone, is rude and disrespectful to people he doesn |