From the first page of his shattering new novel, James Lee Burke’s gorgeous prose enfolds the reader, who cannot help but be enthralled, to the extent that one finds oneself wishing that the book could just go on forever. Or at least that was my own feeling, so completely was I under the author’s spell. And when the stunning conclusion does come, that sentiment was only reinforced.
It is nothing new to say that James Lee Burke’s writing includes perfectly drawn portraits of even minor characters, as well as lush descriptions of the Louisiana of his and his protagonist’s birth. In this case, he also brings to life the history of the area, in its plantation society, pre-Emancipation days, primarily through two of its characters. One is Kermit Abelard, the scion of the wealthy Abelard family, with its historical New Orleans prominence, who has been romancing Dave’s adopted daughter, Alafair, as the novel opens. Dave objects to the liaison, mostly because of the large difference in age, as well as his suspicions about the family and its morality, or lack thereof; another aspect is the relationship between Kermit and Robert Weingart, an oft-convicted felon whose part in Kermit’s life is of questionable motive and definition. Robert has become a celebrated author as well, and that in turn plays a part in the two men’s influence on Alafair, herself an aspiring novelist.
The other old-Louisiana player is Layton Blanchet, a millionaire who hires Clete Purcell, Dave’s life-long friend from their days with the New Orleans P.D., now working as a p.i., to find out who his wife, as he suspects, is sleeping with. Clete plays a major part in this book, where we find him going through suicidal and homicidal rages, as indeed Dave does as well.
The tale begins when Dave, a New Iberia sheriff’s detective working on his own time after the rape and murder of seven women, all very young, black and poor, visits a penal work gang outside Natchez, Mississippi to interview a man whose young sister is among the victims, and who claims he knows the identity of the killer. When that man is himself murdered, and the body of another young girl is discovered, Dave and Clete decide that since the deaths of young black girls is likely to go uninvestigated if they don’t do the investigating themselves, they chart a course which endangers their lives and those of Alafair and Dave’s wife, Molly, among others. More killings follow, and motives are obscure at best. And we are told that no matter the jeopardy in which Dave and Clete are placed, as Clete is fond of saying, “the Bobbsey twins from Homicide are forever.” Their friendship goes back more than three decades; both men still are haunted by flashbacks from Vietnam; they have both gone from New Orleans patrolmen to detectives, and their loyalty to each other is boundless. Neither is the reader immune to their goodness and charm, and we must profoundly hope that the Bobbsey twins from Homicide do indeed go on forever. Very highly recommended.
