Rating: 
Summary: Another dark tale involving Dave Robicheaux
Review: With each successive novel, James Lee Burke delves deeper into the human psyche, and more deeply into his main protaganist, Dave Robicheaux.
Jolie Blon's Bounce centers around Robicheaux trying to connect two seemingly unconnected murders, one a teenager from a farming family, the other a strung-out prostitute. Around this plot swirl a typical rogues gallery of characters that enter Robicheaux's sphere: Tee Bobby Hulin, a blues guitarist and singer who pens the song that becomes the book's title. Jimmy Dean Styles, an ex-boxer and current bar owner and music producer, Marvin Oates, a seemingly innocent bible salesman, Sal Angelo, a Viet Nam vet who may have been with Dave's unit, and one of the nastiest characters Burke has brought to life, the former plantation overseer known simply as "Legion." There is also a duo of lawyers, Perry LaSalle, whose grandfather owned a pepper plantation, and Barbara Shanahan, a beautiful but angry woman who gets involved with Dave's pal Clete Purcel. Throw in some drug dealers, crooked cops, New Orleans mafia and a woman with secrets and you have a dark tale that will have you turning page after page.
Burke's strengths continue in this book: Beautiful prose depicting the Louisiana landscape or gritty descriptions of those who inhabit this otherworldly place. The dialogue smacks you in the face. The characters show multiple dimensions and always have a surprise in store for Dave or the reader. The story works on multiple levels, with the murder mystery nearly secondary to the inner story as Dave uncovers the connection between Legion, LaSalle and Tee Bobby Hulin, and other connections.
My knocks would be that old Streak is getting very close to the edge of not being likable. He's a very flawed character, self-righteous to a fault, fighting off the constant urge to drink, but what bothers me is that he can't seem to have a conversation with a single person without insulting them, no matter how polite they are to him. What is it with this guy? Still, I root for him and there are some things that happen in this story that no one should have to endure.
Bring on Last Car to Elysian Fields!
Rating: 
Summary: And the demon was Legion
Review: I have read most everything that James Lee Burke has written. I have said in an earlier review that there can not be a finer descriptive author currently writing. When Burke writes about the swamp you can feel the humidity and smell the water and hear the crickets. When he writes about a summer thunder storm you can smell the wet on the pavement and feel the vapor rising into the air.
I must add to this Burke's ability to creat believeable characters filled with all the human faults and gifts we see in people around us. Gritty is descriptive but falls short of what I want to convey.
Jolie Blon's Bounce involves two murders. One of a innocent teenage girl and the other of a prostitute who is related to the mob. The main suspect is Tee Bobby Hulin, a gifted musician who, despite hit gift, seems to be on the road to self imposed ruin. But Dave is not convinced of Hulin's guilt and Burke provides us with an array of possible bad guys. One, perhaps the most evil character yet devised by Burke, is Legion, a former overseer of a large farm and molester of black women, who bests Dave in a physical confrontation and then demeans him in a way that will surprise you. You won't believe this guy.
Speaking of surprises, the outcome surprised me.
If you've liked other Burke books then you'll like this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring
Review: I found this book from Burke to be surprisingly contrived and ended up getting boring
Rating:
Summary: Evil Demons from the Bayou
Review: "Jolie Blon's Bounce" is so much more than a murder mystery. In this story, Lousiana police detective Dave Robicheaux is searching for clues to solve the murders of two women. Are the two murders related? One of the prime suspects is Legion Guidry. Legion is an evil demon through and through. He is a former overseer on a plantation in southern Louisiana and has a shameful history. Burke does a wonderful job developing the character of Legion and other interesting players in the story.The other evil demon is Robicheaux's continuing struggle to beat alcholism. Robicheaux flirts briefly with addiction to ampehtamines in his own battle with the bottle. James Lee Burke does a great job of sharing the thoughts of the police detective with us. As always in his books, his descriptions of the Lousiana bayous are fabulous. You can really feel the humidity and hear the haunting sounds of the bayou. I think this book would make a great movie. It has it all--great setting, great plot, and memorable characters. A real five-star read.
Rating:
Summary: Dave Robicheaux makes you work
Review: It's hard to turn down the opportunity to read a James Lee Burke novel. Being in touch with the south and most of all, with the beauty of the flora and the fauna, it's impossible not to be moved with his travelogue detailing of what grows there and why it stopped growing there. Joining that is Mr. Burke's appreciation for the past, and how his hero, Dave Robicheaux, father, husband, RVN vet, alcoholic, cop, reminds us that we are forever responsible for the consequences of our acts. Finally there is Dave wrestling with his addictions, cognizant that it really is one day at a time, and he better not try to fill the one gallon bucket with five gallons of "stuff." Great list of characters: Legion Guidry, the Darth Vader of this novel, his wondeful wife Bootsie, recidivist offender Jimmy Dean Styles, gifted but terminally flawed Tee Bobby, and of course his best friend Clete Purcell. We get more out of the friendship of the two men here in "Jolie Blon's Bounce" than before and begin to understand why the two men are together as a pair, through hard times and good times and why Dave always sticks with Clete even though it's a brotherhood of only two. On it's own it's a great book with moments of humor, sadness, the continual racial agony that haunts especially the south, and the wonderful prose of Mr. Burke, and doesn't require any of the other Robicheaux novels to support it. If there is a drawback it is that with each successive Robicheaux tale, the writing becomes to some extent recipe or formula oriented. There's a killing most gruesome, a conflict in his marriage, a flirtation with drinking, ribald storytelling with Clete and retribution for the bad guys and vindication for the good guys. But like Parker's Spenser, I'll keep on reading him. Larry Scantlebury 5 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Born on the Bayou
Review: I would probably read anything written by James Lee Burke simply because I enjoy his style. The vivid details in his descriptions of the deep South, as well as his ability to capture the kind of racial dynamics that have somehow managed to make it into the 21st Century, are remarkable. The writing is often poetic and insightful, and Burke seems to recognize just what it is that separates the truly bad characters from the rest of us. That said, at some point the reader is forced to suspend reality within the pages of Jolie Blon's Bounce, which in my opinion, ultimately becomes more of an allegory about good versus evil than a murder mystery.
Rating:
Summary: Narrator Ruined Book
Review: I might have found James Lee Burke's writing interesting, his descriptions detailed, his characters well-rounded, etc. as I have read in all of the wonderful reviews about his books. However, I did not have the opportunity to do so, because Mark Hammer's completely uninspired monotone put me off the book and I was unable to force myself to listen to the novel after the first two tapes. His voice has no inflection whatsoever, and the grainy quality quickly gets on one's nerves. It sounds rather like nails scraping across a blackboard. I would recommend (and shall be trying to obtain) a version of this novel read by a different narrator, or perhaps the print version.
Rating:
Summary: beautiful descriptions; annoyingly detailed descriptions
Review: When this book is "on," it's poetry. Some of the descriptions are simply beautiful. On the other hand, much of the book overwhelms with details of the dress of each character. Don't get me wrong, I love little details in a book. They bring the story to life. However, in this book there's a repeating formula of "he/she wore ___ and ___ and ___." It happens over and over again, and I found myself impatiently waiting for the expected litany so I could get on with the action. The plot is thought-provoking and surreal, but not necessarily pleasant or easy to follow. Things move very slowly at times and there are not a lot of clues or solving going on. I couldn't decide if I loved or hated the person who reads this book. He does the Cajun accent and cadence very well, but he reads slowly, almost as if half-asleep at times. I found myself losing the train of the book and had to wonder if it was the author or the reader. The addition of a recording at the beginning and end of Harry Choates' version of "Jolie Blon" is definitely a plus.
Rating:
Summary: Just What I've Always Wanted
Review: ...a sink-your-teeth-into-it mystery, a big tough thriller of a book that you can snuggle up with after pulling on a pair of soft cotton pants and a soft cotton T-shirt, sitting in your sunroom on a rainy day. ...I'd never read any of JLB's work because, being gay, I am almost allergic to the type of thrillers written by, say, Michael Connelly, John Sandford, or Elmore Leonard whose protagonists have so much testosterone in their blood that it comes through the pages like a vapor. Yeah, I usually stick to Carol Higgins Clark, Kathy Hogan Trocheck, Mary Higgins Clark, Susan Wittig Albert, Sue Grafton, Janis Harrison, and the like; mystery novels with female protagonists. But I had a romping good time with "Jolie Blon's Bounce". And you will too, if you pick it up.
Rating:
Summary: Sometimes You Have to Look to the Past to Find the Truth
Review: Sixteen-year-old Amanda Boudreau is raped and shot to death on a Saturday afternoon while she was out four-wheeling with her boy friend. A black man, who was minding his own business on his front porch, saw them drive by. He also saw a car with three passengers going in the same direction. One of them tossed a beer can out the window. Then he heard a gunshot. The police find the beer can and the prints on it point to Tee Bobby Hulin, a twenty-five-year old black hustler, a guy who habitually finds himself going down the wrong paths with the wrong people. Tee Bobby looks good to the police, but Dave Robicheaux isn't convinced. Then Attorney Perry La Salle, heir to a long history of local land owners, infuriates the town of New Iberia by taking Tee Bobby's case. Robicheaux finds a historical link between the La Salles and Tee Bobby's family. In the past generation the only link the wealthy landowners and the local poor had were as overseer and poorly paid hired help in the fields. One overseer was a vicious monster called Legion, who was known to demand his way with the female workers. It was thought that Legion was dead, turns out he wasn't. Turns out he had a history with Robicheaux as well. As for me, I enjoyed this book, although I can certainly understand why others might not want to dive right in and read their Sunday away. Though you can read it in a couple of sittings, perhaps this is the kind of story best read over a week or two, small doses at a time, so that you can think about the way Mr. Burke mixes his theme of good and evil up with his characters. Also there are quite a few people to get to know in this story, people I enjoyed meeting, people I thought about for a long time after I finished the book.
|
