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nigellicus 's review for:
The Neon Rain
by James Lee Burke
Two together this time, and two re-reads: In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead and The Neon Rain, by James Lee Burke. The reason I picked up the first is because I knew that a fim version was due to be released this year. The reason I picked up the latter is beacuse when I finished the former, I wanted more.
The first thing you notice about In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead is that awesome title. Just look at it. Think it. Say it aloud a few times to yourself. Say it in your best aproximation of a Louisiana accent. There you go. The language and the imagery it evokes wafts over your inner ear and eye like something utterly familiar to you that you had somehow forgotten until you read those words in that fake-ass accent and suddenly there it was again. You knew it all along.
That's what Burke's writing does. His lyrical purple passages may describe scenery, weather, humans, states of mind, the many and varied standing wave fronts of ethical behaviours by individuals or groups, magnificently good or staggeringly evil, but every last one strikes clear through the heart and the brain like lightning out of blue sky.
Both feature Dave Robicheaux, Burke's recurring hero. Vietnam vet, alcoholic, haunted by memories and sometimes ghosts, intensely aware of the beauty of the world around him and the evil it hides and, hell, I can't believe I spelled that right first time and without looking it up.
Neon Rain is the first Robicheaux novel, and takes place while he is still with the New Orleans Police Department. In later books he has moved to Iberia Parish and works for the Sherrif's Department there, but New Orleans often features; indeed, 2008's The Tin Roof Blow-Down is an angry dirge to the death of the city at the hands of, first, Katrina and, second, official corruption and neglect. Informed by a death row inmate that someone has put a price on his head, Dave and his partner, Clete Purcel, home in on mob bosses, pimps, pornographers and government assasins, paying a high price while bodies pile up around them.
Cont'd....
The first thing you notice about In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead is that awesome title. Just look at it. Think it. Say it aloud a few times to yourself. Say it in your best aproximation of a Louisiana accent. There you go. The language and the imagery it evokes wafts over your inner ear and eye like something utterly familiar to you that you had somehow forgotten until you read those words in that fake-ass accent and suddenly there it was again. You knew it all along.
That's what Burke's writing does. His lyrical purple passages may describe scenery, weather, humans, states of mind, the many and varied standing wave fronts of ethical behaviours by individuals or groups, magnificently good or staggeringly evil, but every last one strikes clear through the heart and the brain like lightning out of blue sky.
Both feature Dave Robicheaux, Burke's recurring hero. Vietnam vet, alcoholic, haunted by memories and sometimes ghosts, intensely aware of the beauty of the world around him and the evil it hides and, hell, I can't believe I spelled that right first time and without looking it up.
Neon Rain is the first Robicheaux novel, and takes place while he is still with the New Orleans Police Department. In later books he has moved to Iberia Parish and works for the Sherrif's Department there, but New Orleans often features; indeed, 2008's The Tin Roof Blow-Down is an angry dirge to the death of the city at the hands of, first, Katrina and, second, official corruption and neglect. Informed by a death row inmate that someone has put a price on his head, Dave and his partner, Clete Purcel, home in on mob bosses, pimps, pornographers and government assasins, paying a high price while bodies pile up around them.
Cont'd....