gennyinabattle

Saturday, August 14, 2010

'The Glass Rainbow': Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcell Together Forever?

Review: THE GLASS RAINBOW (Simon & Schuster Audio 2010)
By guest blogger Star Lawrence
Author, James Lee Burke; read by Will Patton

This is the 18th Robicheaux/Purcell caper—is it the last? I will get to that in a moment.

Dave, as legions of fans know, is a mercurial cop-family man guy, who was tossed off the New Orleans cops and landed in the New Iberia, Louisiana, Sheriff’s Department. Clete is his bigger-than-life brawler of a pal, late of the NO cops, never at the Sheriff’s Department, and now sort of a freewheeling PI and world-class drinker.

These two are low-life Velcro. They find every reptilian, old-money, new-money, pimp and scoundrel rattling around Louisiana. In THE GLASS RAINBOW, they are entangled with a creepy old oil man and his dilettante son, Kermit. Added to the mix are some young women tossed into landfills like trash and one of those celebrity criminals. You know, the kind celebrities lionize.

About then, Dave starts spotting a phantom steam paddlewheeler on his beloved Bayou Teche outside his house. And the guys in the black SUVs start to show up.

Amidst the trademark Burke nature lore (the bruised skies, the tink of raindrops), the great grand-daughter of a New Orleans famed voodoo queen glances at Dave and remarks that he is “disappearin’, thinning out.”

Now, I don’t want to spoil this, but let’s say the ending is ambiguous. Dave boards the paddlewheeler, sees his long-dead parents, spots medics from Vietnam…Clete tries to pull him back down the gangplank.

Is this the end for our guys?

Star Lawrence owns two websites—one, HEALTHSass (http://healthsass.blogspot.com), contains interesting health tidbits and the other, Do the Hopey Copey (http://hopeycopey.blogspot.com) is for those seeking to stay alive in this economy.