After reading the second novel in the Dave Robicheaux series, I have a very different take on Burke. It’s been about 8 months since I last read a Burke novel (Neon Rain), and I was most unimpressed. However, much to my delight, this was a very good book. The quality of the writing is remarkable, at times poetic, especially with regard to the description of the Louisiana bayou. In this book, Dave has retired from the New Orleans PD, and he’s moved to the swamp where he sells bait and rents out boats to fisherman. He has settled down to a quiet life with a good wife. On one of their idyllic boat outings, a small plane crashes near the boat. They could see the faces of the people inside before the plane hit the water, and Dave’s wife, Annie, thought one of them was a child. Dave dons his scuba gear and immediately dives on the wreck only to find four dead adults and one live, non-English speaking girl. Things get screwy when the press reports that only three bodies were found. The author, something like Ken Bruen, takes us through Dave’s fight with alcoholism, a recurrent theme in the book. Mostly, Burke focuses on the fate of the downtrodden, hence the title of the book. After Annie’s ugly death, Burke invokes images from the holocaust and the Vietnam war where innocents were trapped in the midst of warfare (just like the little girl on the plane), and Robicheaux thinks, “I commit myself once again to that black box that I cannot think myself out of. Instead, I sometimes recall a passage from the Book of Psalms. I have no theological insight, my religious ethos is a battered one; but those lines seem to suggest an answer that my reason cannot, namely, that the innocent who suffer for the rest of us become anointed and loved by God in a special way; the votive candle their lives had made them heaven’s prisoners.” Along with the philosophy, Burke spins a good plot that had a twist at the end that I did not see coming. Now, I’m motivated and excited to read more of the Robicheaux series.
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