This item is not eligible for Amazon Prime, but millions of other items are. Join Amazon Prime today. Already a member? Sign in.

32 used & new from £0.01
See All Buying Options

Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
Tell a Friend
Jolie Blon's Bounce
 
See larger image
 
Jolie Blon's Bounce (Hardcover)
by James Lee Burke (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  (3 customer reviews)

Availability: Available from these sellers.

32 used & new available from £0.01

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

A Stained White Radiance

A Stained White Radiance by James Lee Burke

5.0 out of 5 stars (3) 
Explore similar items : Books (1)

Product details
  • Hardcover: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Orion (15 Aug 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0752851225
  • ISBN-13: 978-0752851228
  • Product Dimensions: 24.4 x 16.7 x 3.7 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 230,508 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #34 in  Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Authors, A-Z > B > Burke, James Lee

    (Publishers and authors: Improve Your Sales)

Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Like James Lee Burke's other Dave Robichaux novels, Jolie Blon's Bounce has at its core a sense of people as driven by demons; both their own demons--Robichaux's controlled alcoholism and the dark rages that lie behind it--and the demons handed down to them by history. Robichaux knows that gifted young black musician Tee Bobby Hulin was present at the rape and murder of a young white woman--he is also certain that Hulin was neither rapist nor murderer. Equally, though he has no grounds for certainty about it, he has a sense that the killing of the sister of a local mobster has nothing to do with the case and that the interest of an eccentric young bible salesman in the tough woman DA Shanahan and the woman private eye Zerelda is not harmless at all. Robichaux wants to play cases by the book--this gets harder when he is brutalised by a mad old racist and when his friends find themselves in jeopardy.

James Lee Burke has always been intelligent about the edge of things, and here he is taking his hero to the edge of police procedure and the edge of the real--some of this case skirts battles with principalities and powers. This is one of the nerviest and darkest of this extraordinary series and one of the most poetic--an odd word to use of a thriller, yet the right one. --Roz Kaveney

Product Description
Small-time black hustler Tee Bobby Hulin is partly redeemed, in Robicheaux's eyes, by a rare musical gift. Three men are present when Amanda Boudreau is raped and murdered, and Tee Bobby's prints are found at the crime scene. Dave reckons he's innocent, and Tee Bobby pleads so, then attempts suicide in his holding cell. Why? Soon after, hooker and junkie Linda Zeroski is beaten to death by a man wearing leather gloves who, with great care and precision, crushes every bone in her face. Louisiana's murky history casts a long shadow in the work of James Lee Burke, but nowhere longer than here, with the LaSalles family, who settled there before the Louisiana Purchase and built their wealth upon the backs of slave labour. When lawyer Perry LaSalles takes on the defence of Tee Bobby Hulin, Dave knows his motives are fuelled by guilt. For Tee Bobby's grandmother Ladice was seduced by Perry's grandfather, and Amanda Boudreau's death is related to events that happened long before Tee Bobby was born. In this rich and compelling novel James Lee Burke weaves a web of plots and subplots involving perfectly observed characters. Dense with passion and compassion, Burke's novels get better and better.

See all Product Description


Tag this product

 ( What's this?)
Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.
Your tags: Add your first tag
Search Products Tagged with
 

 

Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
5 star: 33%  (1)
4 star: 33%  (1)
3 star: 33%  (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Another Robicheaux. Again., 19 Sep 2002
By Patrick Burnett "penngos" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
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't