SOME of the most vibrant and imaginative fiction being written in America at the moment is in the thriller genre, with James Lee Burke's series of Dave Robicheaux novels near the top of the tree.
He has taken as his milieu the area of Southern Louisiana in and around New Orleans the old world, tarnished glory of the city itself the lakes, swamps and tangled tropical vegetation of New Iberia Parish, the sudden cannon roll of storm and tempest, and fashioned of it a unique vellum upon which to inscribe his tales of evil happenings, dark blood stirring and old scores waiting to be settled.
Robicheaux is a Cajun, and a typical product of his environment. His father was a happy go lucky lay about, beloved by many but a monster to live with, yet his son idolised him. Flawed by his inheritance a drum roll of drinking, fighting and fornicating he was a wild youth himself, went to war in Vietnam, took to alcohol to drown the consequent terrors of that awful time, managed to straighten himself out, become a policeman, rescue a little girl from a plane wreck and adopt her as his daughter, and marry his childhood sweetheart, the much abused but still defiant Bootsie.
He has endured many vicissitudes since he first appeared in print the murder of his first wife, a number of attempts on his life, being thrown off the force, days and nights in jail, reinstatement, the constant fight to stay off the booze and recurrent nightmares of his time as a foxhole infiltrator in Vietnam but disillusionment has never really taken hold and he continues the good fight of righting wrongs, tilting at windmills and striving to make those mean streets just a little easier to perambulate.
In this latest episode he is approached by an old black lady named Bertha Fontenot with the request that he do something about preserving her land, which is in the process of being despoiled by its putative owner, one Moleen Bertrand. In or around the same time he meets Sonny Boy Marsallus, a fixer and a gambler who appears to have fallen foul of the powerful and crooked Giacano family. Sonny Boy entrusts Robicheaux with a notebook, and thus is set in train yet another of our author's delightfully involved plots, kicked off
"As I headed back toward my pickup truck, I could see heat lightning, out over Lake Pontchartrain, trembling like shook foil inside a storm bank that had just pushed in from the Gulf. An hour later the rain was blowing in blinding sheets all the way across the Atchafalaya swamp. Sonny Boy's notebook vibrated on the dashboard with the roar of my engine.
Ghosts from the past begin to surface as our hero begins his investigations the dog tags of a soldier he knew in Vietnam appear, he survives an assassination attempt when Sonny Boy shoots his assailant, and his old partner, Clete Purcel, complete with porkpie hat, Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts, pops up out of the undergrowth to help and sometimes stymie him.
Like, say, Elmore Leonard, Burke is never so good as when he is portraying villains and in Emile Pogue, hit man for the CIA, fitness freak and thinking psychopath, he has come up with a class A specimen. The relationship between him and Robicheaux, suppurating as it is with an almost loving hatred, is one of the high points of the book, but there are many others to savour and enjoy, for Burke's strengths are legion and his vision all encompassing.
I'm tempted to quote his final paragraph, which reminds me in no small way of Chandler's valedictory to all of us, good, bad and indifferent, at the end of The Big Sleep, but I'll leave it to you, gentle reader to pursue for your self. Indulge yourself this New Year, and make the acquaintance of Burke and his hero your life may not be changed but you'll buy yourself some dark laughter.
