I've talked several times about one of my favorite authors, James Lee Burke. I especially like his "Dave Robicheaux" novels with Clete Purcell as his sidekick. I've read all of them, and I'm going back and re-reading them on audiobook with the Libby App from my library. I just finished Jolie Blon's Bounce. James Lee Burke's prose drips from the pages like honey on a summer Sunday afternoon, inviting the reader into the scene being described where you can not only see from the vantage point of the protagonist, but you can smell the scents in the room. You suddenly are reminded of memories dredged to the surface from another time or place - even from places that no longer exist.
In case you aren't familiar with his work, I've cut & pasted an excerpt that I had to go back and read two or three times:
"A love affair with Louisiana is in some ways like falling in love with the Biblical Whore of Babylon. We try to smile at its carnival-like politics, its sweaty whiskey-soaked demagogues, the ignorance bred by the poverty and insularity of its Cajun and afro-Caribbean culture, but our self-deprecating manner is a poor disguise for the realities that hover on the edges of one's vision like dirty smudges on a family portrait. The State roadsides and parking lots of discount stores are strewn, if not actually layered, with mind-numbing amounts of litter thrown there by the poor and uneducated and the revelers for whom a self-congratulatory hedonism is a way of life. With regularity, land developers who are accountable to no one, bulldoze down stands of virgin cypress and 200 year old live oaks often at night so the irrevocable nature of their work cannot be seen until daylight when it is too late to stop it. The petrochemical industry poisons waters with impunity, and even trucks in waste from out of state and dumps it into open sludge pits usually in rural black communities. Rather than fight monied interests, most of the State's politicians give their constituencies casinos and power ball lotteries and drive-by daquiri windows along with low income taxes for the wealthy and 8.25% sales tax on food for the poor."
James Lee BurkeJolie Blon's Bounce
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