With pleasure I look forward to reading another Dave Robincheaux novel by James Lee Burke. Robincheaux is a Louisiana detective, working near but not in New Orleans, and the first adventure I had with him took place in In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead, a not-quite-sprawling novel that involves a Hollywood company filming a Civil War movie, prostitution, racial relations, sadism, murder, political corruption and the occasional appearance of a group of Confederate soldiers. Wow!
I first read something by Burke in the 2007 Best American Mystery Stories. Often Ill come across an author in one of the Best series and check him out. Usually I'll read one book and lose interest. Burke will not follow that pattern. My only hesitation about him as a writer is that he's a bit too descriptive for my taste—yet I dog-eared several pages, almost all heavy on description or commentary. I'm only going to talk about two of them.
1) There was one sentence where I literally fell in love with Burke's writing. The narrator, Robincheaux, is in a bus depot watching a pimp, pervert or some other type of lowlife pick up two young girls. "When he talked with them, his happy face made me think of a mythical goat-footed balloonman whispering far and wee to children in springtime." (page 118) All right. Blow e. e. cummings in my ear, and I'll follow you anywhere. I also love writers that reference things without pointing out the source—if, of course, I figure out the reference on my own, which leads into my second quote.
2) Earlier in the novel he's talking about a girl who had a prostitution record at age fourteen and says, "Others had helped get her there. My first vote would be for the father, the child molester, in Mamou. But our legal system looks at nouns, seldom at adverbs." (emphasis mine, page 39) I DON’T GET IT. I got the e. e. cummings reference, but this I don't understand. Is it another reference? A reference to something that sails three inches over my head? My friend Tessa and I talked about it. Is he saying the legal system ignores the whys behind everything? Maybe, and I can live with that—but I still sense I'm missing something. Can anyone help me out?
Anyway, I recommend the book. (But probably not for Kathy. My bet is it would be too dark for her.)
And: is anyone out there already a fan of this Burke guy? I want to know where he's been all my life.
And2: Look at the title. I'm spending a lot of time mulling why it's In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead rather than In the Electric Mist with THE Confederate Dead. Yeah, I really do think about stuff like that.
OK. I'll stop now.
