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robtwinem

runner

I live in Bristol UK literary fiction and crime are my books of choice and when not reading I like to run

The writing of James Lee Burke is delightful to read

Robicheaux - James Lee Burke

The action takes place in the Louisiana delta region of the United States. Dave Robicheaux is still haunted by the death of his wife Molly in an automobile accident and has always suspected that JT Bartez was to blame. One morning he awakens up in a police station to be told that he is the chief suspect in the murder of Bartez and given that Robicheaus has marks and bruises on his hands can only lead to one conclusion....So as our knowledgeable detective sets out to reclaim his good name a serial killer with the gentle name of Smiley is at work in the delta region killing whose who deserve to have their life terminated.

 

James Lee Burke writes lyrically about a time and place he obviously knows very well. It is not so much the story that attracts me to his writing but his wonderful descriptions full of warmth and humour..."Those truths have less to do with the dead than the awareness that we are no different from them, that they are still with us and we are still with them, and there is no afterlife but only one life"......"I admired him and perhaps sometimes even envied his combination of composure and ardor, as well as his ability to float above the pettiness that characterizes the greater part of our lives"....."With each day that passed, I felt as though the world I had known was being airbrushed out of a painting"....."She was one of those women who seemed to choose solitude and plainness over beauty, and anger over happiness"...."people are what they do, not what they think, not what they say"....."He's one step away from the worm food and knows it"...."Louisiana is not a state; it's an outdoor mental asylum in which millions of people stay bombed most of their lives"...."Solitude and peace with oneself are probably the only preparation one has for death"....."If you have attended the dying, you know what their last moments are like. They anticipate the separation of themselves from the world of the living before you do, and they accept it with dignity and without complaint"...