Not really a surprise ending. One of the (literally) rotten guys turns out to be the main villain. Dave R. metes out vengeance to the underlings. His partner is, as partners are often, corrupt--but with a good reason. The love interest (Annie) just sort of fades into the background. I thought she was a goner. I don't like tricky endings, but this was a little bit of a plodder.
Memorable lines: "I didn't understand then who the Nazis were, but I imagined them as dark-uniformed, slit-eyed creatures who lived beneath the water and who could burn and murder people of goodwill whenever they wished."
Mortality: "I left the (hospital) room quietly with the sense of both guilt and relief that we feel when we're allowed to walk away from the bedside of someone who reminds us of our mortality.
Life: Did I pitch the best game I could, even though it was a flawed one, right through the bottom of the ninth.
Louisiana: A place that never seemed to change, where it was never a treason to go with the cycle of things and let the season have its way.
Things to look up: Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ronceveaux
Final thoughts: Burke goes for broke with everything. Style is flamboyant, with long descriptive passages and with leaps of imagination. Landscape has life, power. Characters are equally large. Dave gives and takes blows repeatedly. Bayous hold dead bodies, alligators, long-suffering hard-working, tied to the land people. Danger lurks. Plot, too. Corruption in New Orleans and Florida, corruption in Vietnam, racism, violence. The Annie/Dave love scenes, in such a world, are fraught with extra power and meaning, too. Love as a way of fighting the flood of evil that threatens to drown everyone and everything.
Robicheaux on his philosophy of life: "Did I pitch the best game I could, even though it was a flawed one, right through the bottom of the ninth." It works as a description of Burke's writing as well. Flawed, but he gives it everything he's got on every single page.
Memorable lines: "I didn't understand then who the Nazis were, but I imagined them as dark-uniformed, slit-eyed creatures who lived beneath the water and who could burn and murder people of goodwill whenever they wished."
Mortality: "I left the (hospital) room quietly with the sense of both guilt and relief that we feel when we're allowed to walk away from the bedside of someone who reminds us of our mortality.
Life: Did I pitch the best game I could, even though it was a flawed one, right through the bottom of the ninth.
Louisiana: A place that never seemed to change, where it was never a treason to go with the cycle of things and let the season have its way.
Things to look up: Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ronceveaux
Final thoughts: Burke goes for broke with everything. Style is flamboyant, with long descriptive passages and with leaps of imagination. Landscape has life, power. Characters are equally large. Dave gives and takes blows repeatedly. Bayous hold dead bodies, alligators, long-suffering hard-working, tied to the land people. Danger lurks. Plot, too. Corruption in New Orleans and Florida, corruption in Vietnam, racism, violence. The Annie/Dave love scenes, in such a world, are fraught with extra power and meaning, too. Love as a way of fighting the flood of evil that threatens to drown everyone and everything.
Robicheaux on his philosophy of life: "Did I pitch the best game I could, even though it was a flawed one, right through the bottom of the ninth." It works as a description of Burke's writing as well. Flawed, but he gives it everything he's got on every single page.
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