James Lee Burke – Page 2 – Cannonball Read 17

Bayou Bengals

Heaven's Prisoners by James Lee Burke

March 4, 2021 by Jake Leave a Comment

When I was a kid, I used to go with my dad to visit his parents, who retired to a bayou in north Louisiana. And while north Louisiana is almost a drastically different state than south Louisiana, the flourishes of French culture combined with the marshlands, cypress trees, and petrostate aesthetic are still prevalent in that neck of the woods. So whenever I need to do some bayou reading, I look up the next David Robicheaux book from James Lee Burke. I plan on pouring […]

A Decade in the Life

The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke

September 4, 2020 by Jake Leave a Comment

The David Robicheaux series is beloved in mystery circles and it’s one I’ve always mean to come back to after having read In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead ten years ago. I liked the writing well enough and I especially enjoyed the south Louisiana setting. New Orleans makes for a great mystery location. But I don’t know; I just made excuse-after-excuse not to return to it. Yet I set those aside when I randomly grabbed the first one from the library. And despite a massive library […]

The evening sky was streaked with purple, the color of torn plums…

Neon Rain by James Lee Burke

January 21, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This is the first novel in the Dave Robichaux mystery series by James Lee Burke. I don’t know anything about subsequent novels, except that there is a lot of them, and for me, this amazing Onion article that makes me feel seen in a way like no other: https://www.theonion.com/audiobook-narrator-really-going-for-broke-with-cajun-ac-1821950450 Anyway, Dave Robichaux is a New Orleans police detective and Vietnam vet looking into the case of a dead sex worker who is found floating in a bayou. There’s conflict between her death being ruled as […]

Glorious Mess

January 8, 2014 by Jenny S Leave a Comment

I’m usually a big fan of Burke’s beautiful and brutal prose and this isn’t the first Dave Robicheaux novel to take place outside of Louisiana, but somehow the whole thing didn’t click for me. It felt like there were too many moving parts. There’s a serial killer, who everyone thinks is dead, who fixates on Dave’s daughter, Alafair. There are the struggles of Gretchen Horowitz, a documentary filmmaker and daughter of Dave’s best friend, Clete Purcel, who is trying to put her past behind her […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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