HAUNTED BAYOU: ‘ROBICHEAUX’ BY JAMES LEE BURKE
A troubled Robicheaux returns in the latest from James Lee Burke
By calculations from earlier works in James Lee Burke’s popular series, fictional detective Dave Robicheaux should be past 80. His age is inconsistent in the sequence, but he’s a senior citizen in the latest, titled simply “Robicheaux.” He’s working as a sheriff’s deputy in New Iberia, La., and refers to himself in the narrative as “semiretired.” His colleagues call him “Pops” — among several other less complimentary epithets — but his energy and acuity are undiminished.
No less diminished are Robicheaux’s personal demons: alcoholism (he attends AA meetings with mixed success), nightmares about his poverty-stricken childhood in rural Louisiana, and his memories of the Vietnam War. Worst of all, he is haunted by the death of his third wife, Molly, in an automobile accident that may or may not have been intentional. Now Dave lives alone in the backwoods of Louisiana, his constant companions a raccoon and a pet cat. He is obsessed over tracking down and wreaking vengeance on the man who killed Molly. When he does find that man, one T.J. Dartez, Robicheaux confronts and threatens him at his home in front of his wife. But it goes no further than that; Robicheaux leaves the scene.
Among the few humans Robicheaux can trust are his best friend, Clete Purcel, a violent, alcoholic former cop now turned private detective; and Dave’s adoptive daughter, Alifair, whom he rescued when she was 5 from death squads in El Salvador. Purcel is a loose cannon, apt to commit any act he deems necessary for a just cause. Robicheaux’s loyalty to his friend extends to taking out a loan against his house when Purcel is in danger of being tortured to death for a debt he owes some local gangsters.
Alifair has been a real achiever: an honor student who went to Reed College and was No. 1 in her class at Stanford Law. The young woman is now interested in filmmaking. She has written a script based on a book about a real-life valiant Civil War slave, by Robicheaux’s neighbor, a successful writer named Levon Broussard.
Also important in Robicheaux’s daily life is his boss, Helen Soileau, sheriff of New Iberia. She’s strong, honest, smart and, incidentally, bisexual.
One night, when Robicheaux is particularly stressed and depressed, he goes on a bender — a serious lapse during which he drives under the influence, encounters Dartez on the road and has a blackout. The next morning Dartez is found murdered in his own car, and Sheriff Soileau assigns Robicheaux to the case. Dave’s problem here is that he doesn’t know whether he himself was the murderer. His highly tuned sense of ethics prevents him from declaring officially that he didn’t do it. At some point, he must become a suspect. Unwanted “assistance” from the third member of Sheriff Soileau’s force, a dirty cop named Spade Labiche, aggravates Robicheaux’s situation. This is all pretty far-fetched, though nonetheless engrossing for the most part.
Mr. Burke’s subplots and subsidiary characters are manifold, complex and hard to keep track of. There are loads of bad guys in Mr. Burke’s Louisiana. We meet slick Jimmy Nightingale, a demagoguing populist politician, and his half-sister/possible cousin/possible lover, Emmeline. Quite vivid is a sleazy film producer named Tony Nemo, who seems acutely real in light of current events (even though the book was written before the Harvey Weinstein scandal).
There’s a particularly vile killer and torturer named Kevin Penny, and a mentally challenged, eerily childlike hired avenger known variously as Chester Wimple, Smiley and “The Cleaner.” The bad things hit the fan when Broussard’s unstable wife, Rowena, accuses Nightingale of having raped her.
It’s not a neat storyline, and Mr. Burke’s prose can be tediously flowery and overwritten. Events are as messy as Robicheaux’s tormented psyche. The line between good guys and bad guys is often blurred, while virtue is not necessarily rewarded. Mr. Burke reflects this by refusing to tie things up in an orderly feel-good fashion at the end. Perhaps the author is just trying to tell us that life doesn’t follow logical norms.