Shannon M (Trying to get all my reviews written)'s Reviews > Clete

I have only read 7 or 8 of the books in the Dave Robicheaux series and this is #24. Thus, take my review with a grain of salt if you are one of those who diligently follows everything that James Lee Burke puts to pen.

In my opinion, the series is beginning to fall apart, and CLETE is an example of a great writer who is losing his powers. Right now, it has a 4.21 rating on Goodreads, so I may be blind to the wondrous story it tells, but as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t tell a story at all. It is a jumble of confused and muddled ramblings, offset, periodically, by a striking phrase that displays Burke’s impressive poetic strengths. Here are a couple of great ones that caught my eye:

I felt like a boil had just formed on the lining of my stomach.

My wiring was shutting down on me from ways that I recognized from the past. It’s called agitated or clinical depression, or the dark nights of the soul.

But Burke is a poet who always had difficulty telling a linear story, and here, in my opinion, he has lost it completely. For example, fentanyl is mentioned throughout the novel as the current plague, but the story is set in the late nineties, before fentanyl became the scourge it is today. Correctly, Burke should have singled out heroin, cocaine, and/or OxyContin as the affliction tormenting Clete. Every time fentanyl was mentioned, it removed me from the timeline that we were supposed to be following.

What there is of a story consists of something (maybe fentanyl, maybe something much worse) that was accidentally hidden in Clete’s car when he took it to the car wash, and Clete’s dealings with the villains who are trying to retrieve it. People are tortured and killed. Clete joins up with Dave to attempt to solve the mystery. There are mysterious women—Burke doesn’t really understand women but he loves them so you can be sure there are several different varieties in each novel. My favourite was Gracie Lamar, but we really never get a good description of her, just tantalizing sketches.

There are ghosts, or hallucinations, of a perfect woman, who haunts Clete.

Maybe I saw illusions. Or I had nightmares. Or what Dave calls nonchemical blackouts.

We get glimpses of Dave from Clete’s point of view, to wiz:

Dave should have been a priest instead of a cop, and as a result has made a mess of his life, and people like me have had to protect him from himself.

(In the earlier novels in this series, Dave spends much of his time guarding Clete from the straits Clete gets into.)

Basically, I think that Burke can’t stop thinking, and so he must put these thoughts down on paper, even if they are repetitious and don’t form a linear story.

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My review for an earlier book in the series:
 The Tin Roof Blowdown
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Thanks to the Victoria Public Library System for providing the ebook copy that I read.