Customer Reviews

The Neon Rain

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The best way to read any literary series, including those involving hard-boiled detectives, is to pick them up in the order the books were written. That way, the individual stories take on greater meaning as part of the ongoing evolution of a principal character as he or she develops and changes. In light of this, it's tempting to recommend that prospective readers of James Lee Burke's Louisiana-based Dave Robicheaux series should start with *The Neon Rain*, which sets the stage for the numerous subsequent books.

Anyone who reads Burke's prose should be impressed by his unusual gift for verbal description. His ability to paint word pictures of places, characters, moods, and feelings is exquisite, and for this reason alone a reader might plow through the entire story. However, the plot construction of *The Neon Rain* is so anemic that I would not be surprised if many of those who read this New Orleans-based story simply refuse to go on to the subsequent stories set in New Iberia. This is a shame, since most of these later works are excellent mysteries in which the stories are far more complex and engrossing.

In this novel, and to some extent in all of them, Burke employs a formulaic approach in which his protagonist veers from crisis to self-inflicted crisis (in pursuit of righteousness and justice, of course), with the narrative invariably punctuated both by breathtaking descriptions of places and people (and also meals), and periodic episodes involving bloody mayhem. After a while it gets pretty predictable; in his later works, however, Burke develops story lines that are sufficiently interesting that he can make the formula work, at least most of the time.

It should be noted also that Burke demonstrates throughout his *corpus* an admirable sympathy with the downtrodden and disadvantaged both in America and abroad, along with a sneering dislike of the rich and powerful. This political aspect of his writing is certainly unusual within the detective genre, and for me, at least, is highly refreshing.

So, should people seeking a great detective novel read pick up *The Neon Rain*? Yes, but ONLY if they resolve beforehand to view it as a kind of "prequel" to the higher quality Robicheaux novels that follow.

After reading two Dave Robicheaux mysteries by James Lee Burke, I decided to read this series from the very beginning. Neon Rain is the 1st book in the now 14 book series and was extremely helpful in filling in the blanks of Robicheaux's past that are only hinted at in later books.

Neon Rain opens in New Orleans where Robicheaux is a lieutenant in the New Orleans Police Department. He lives on a houseboat in Lake Pontchatrain, is recently divorced, is a Viet Nam vet and a recovering alcoholic. He carries around more than his fair share of scars and baggage. A man on death row at Angola Prison asks to see Robicheaux hours before he is executed, and informs Robicheaux that there is a contract out on his life. Robicheaux is just as surprised as anybody, but it involves the chance discovery of a young black prostitute floating dead in a bayou. In trying to solve the mystery of the contract, the lieutenant stumbles upon lots of graft and corruption in New Orleans that starts with prostitution and drugs, and ends up with murder, tax fraud, and smuggling arms to Central America. It's sometimes hard to figure out who are the bad guys, who are informants and who are the government agents. And the more involved Robicheaux becomes, the more dangerous his life comes.

This is a good start for Burke, although the plot got a little confusing in spots. Robicheaux is a loose canon, and it's hard to tell why his boss thinks he's such a good cop. He can be brutal and violent and unreasonable. And he never follows any rules. Also, Robicheaux becomes romantically involved with Annie Ballard, but I couldn't figure out why she was attracted to him. Still, Burke is a master of description and observation. Some of my favorites include "Reason is a word I always associated with bureaucrats, paper shufflers, and people who formed committees that were never intended to solve anything." Or "My father didn't read or write, but in many ways he learned more from hunting and fishing in the marsh than I had from my years of college education and experience as a policeman." And finally, in comparing himself to a general who also served in Viet Nam, Robicheaux muses "Like those Confederate soldiers buried under the lawn of Jefferson Davis's home, some people share historical real estate that will always be their private country."

The good news is that Burke took this good book and turned it into a terrific series. I plan on reading them all.

Except for a few Christies in my teens, I never read mysteries at all (except for one or two that somehow made it into my college curriculum). It had less to do with a lack of interest than a lack of time. I was a struggling academic a long time (too long) and, although I enjoyed mystery films and TV shows, almost everything I read had to do with what I thought would be my life's vocation.

But the genre always intrigued me. International literary figures from Borges to Duerrenmatt have championed the genre and have often used it to their own ends. I was aware that many mystery writers were quite serious about their writing and that much of it rivaled the best in contemporary serious literature.

So in recent years, I've been playing catch up. I've joined with others in forming a Mystery Discussion Group in my public library...and most of these folks are much more knowledgeable than I am. In the past year, we have been doing a lot of sampling of various series, usually a very early work.

I will say that of all the authors we've discussed thus far, James Lee Burke was the least well received--by OTHERS! I found this hard hitting, hard bitten writer to be compelling. But most of the other members of the group seem to prefer more of a "drawing room" type mystery. I don't think I had ever really realized how great a gulf there was between the various sub-genres (I guess it's the Hammett vs. Christie school of thought).

If you've ever railed against the "bloodless" old-school, high tea kind of mysteries, you may want to check Burke out. People really die brutal, ugly deaths here. Murder is not seen as an intellectual puzzle, but as a horrible, de-humanizing reality. For that alone, I give Burke high marks. His complex, not very likeable (anti-)hero, Dave Robicheaux is another. This scarred Viet Nam vet is cynical, bitter and almost unapproachable. Yet he retains a core of decency that, I think, will redeem him in most readers' eyes. But like his extraordinarily understanding and patient love interest in the novel, the reader will have to cut through an almost impenetrable wall of defenses before discovering that moral core.

Some of the readers below have commented that this is not the strongest effort in the Dave Robicheaux series. That seems likely: first efforts usually aren't. I will certainly encourage my fellow discussion group members to sample other Burke novels before they pass final judgment. But I don't expect that Robicheaux, or Burke himself, to develop a rosier take on life and of human nature. Dave Robicheaux seems to belong to the subset of detective that we call "hard-boiled." I'm interested in reading other entries in the series, and know that if NEON RAIN is any indication, they'll be chock-full of surprises. But one thing I know not to expect is for Dave Robicheaux to turn into Mr.Warmth at any point. Now THAT would be a real disappointment!

I have never before seen Southern Louisiana captured in print with such realism as shown by James Lee Burke. The pages drip with Spanish moss, Creole history, and stifling humidity.

Whether you say "Neon Rain" is the beginning of a first-rate detective series, or a bayou passion play, it really doesn't matter. You can't put the book down. When you read the last Dave Robicheaux tale, you start over. The bar has just been raised in this genre, and nothing else is quite good enough anymore.

My dad listens to a ton of audio books and James lee Burke is at the top of his list; he has most of Burke's books on tape. I listened for months about how good this series was until I just had to give it a try. I ordered the whole series and a few days later a bunch of paperback books were piled high on my desk. Now, a couple of months later I'm on Dixie City Jam and I'm not looking back. Dave is one of the most self-destructive characters I've run across, but that's what makes the book so engrossing. Neon Rain is a great mystery read

A bookseller in Washington D.C. recommended Burke to me. She said "you'll love this character." I thought, a cop running around New Iberia Louisiana? No way. I've been to New Iberia and there's nothing there! But I decided to give it a try and started with the first in the series (Neon Rain). I almost couldn't get through it. This is a poorly written cop story, set in New Orleans, where Robicheaux is a drunken homicide Lt. It has none of the charm or style of the books that follow. Fortunately, Robicheaux decides to move to New Iberia in the second book, and the series really takes off and starts scoring strikes. New readers just discovering James Lee Burke's cajun hero might want to skip "Neon Rain" and pick up the series with "Heaven's Prisoners." You won't be missing much, if anything.

The David Robicheaux novels of James Lee Burke are simply some of the best fiction out there. You will be hard pressed to find a more exciting, more thought provoking, well written, and interesting series.

Neon Rain is not the best book of the series. In my opinion the best are In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead and Dixie City Jam. If you are like me you are thinking of reading this book after you have read some of the later novels. I started at Dixie City Jam and worked my way back. So I agree that in the scheme of things Neon Rain is not the best in the series, but it is a great start to a great thing.

To read about David as a cop in New Orleand working with Clete. To see how it all began.

So in short, this is a great series. I recommend reading some of the later books and going back to this one.

If this is the first book, of the Dave Robicheaux series you have read, then keep reading. This is the worst of the novels of this series. The others are better, oh a lot better! This one is over-the-top violent for no good reason. The rest of the series is Dave evolving into a more intelligent and clever detective, with great sensitivity to himself and humanity.

"The Neon Rain," (1987), the American author James Lee Burke's seventh published novel, was to be the first in his immensely popular, New York Times bestselling Dave Robicheaux series. Like most of the series to follow, the book, a Southern noir, police procedural/mystery, was set in and around New Orleans, Louisiana, more or less home country for Burke, who was born in Houston, Texas, in 1936, and grew up on the Texas-Louisiana gulf coast. He attended Southwestern Louisiana Institute; later received B. A. and M. A. degrees from the University of Missouri in 1958 and 1960 respectively. Over the years he worked as a landman for Sinclair Oil Company, a pipeliner, land surveyor, newspaper reporter, college English professor, social worker on Skid Row in Los Angeles, clerk for the Louisiana Employment Service, and instructor in the U. S. Job Corps.

We meet Robicheaux, previously briefly mentioned in Burke's first book, Half of Paradise, as a detective on the New Orleans police force. He is of Cajun ancestry, and is still reliving the nightmare of his service in Vietnam. He has a drinking problem, and a tendency to violence. His first wife has already left him for a Houston oilman; in this book he will meet Annie, a social worker, whom we will meet again in Burke's later work. On the job, Robicheaux is partnered with Clete Purcell, whom we will meet many times again, an overweight, heavy-drinking, brawling, heavily-scarred survivor of the city's tough Irish Channel neighborhood. In this first book, Robicheaux will be drawn into the case of a young black prostitute whose body is found in a bayou near, but not in, the city of New Orleans, a location where he actually has no jurisdiction. But he feels a compulsion to investigate the young woman's death. And, in doing so, Robicheaux will find himself drawn into some of the darkest alleys and byways of New Orleans' famous French Quarter, thrown into a world of drug lord, pimps, gangsters, and arms smugglers.

We will meet some other characters we'll see over and over again in the early Robicheaux books: his half-brother Jimmie, who, like Dave himself, has a skunk-like white streak (said to be a product of childhood malnutrition) in his black hair: Dave is known, in these early books, as "Streak," to some. We learn a lot about his mother and father, who will also rather disappear from the later books. We see some characters who we'll meet again in many later books, under different names: Starkweather, a Southern, cornpone sadist who appears to suffer from some sexual confusion. General Abshire, rich, and arrogant, who pays no mind to the harm his profitable enterprises cause to others. We also learn about some things we'll continue to hear about in later, but still early, entries in the series: the World War II German submarine, whole families, and Robicheaux's own father, killed in an unfortunately only too resonant in current days, oil drilling rig explosion, all supposedly buried beneath the Gulf of Mexico. More than anything else, seems to me, we'll enjoy some of the most beautiful, knowledgeable writing ever committed to paper about the flora, fauna, geography, and human occupants of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, now so much in the news. To my mind, nobody has ever done it better.

Burke's work has twice been awarded an Edgar for Best Crime Novel of the Year. He has also been a recipient of a Breadloaf and Guggenheim Fellowship and an NEA grant. His early novel The Lost Get-Back Boogie was rejected 111 times over a period of nine years, and upon publication by Louisiana State University press was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. At least eight of his novels have been New York Times bestsellers. If you are not familiar with his work, this is as good a place as any to start.

There is only one other mystery writer alive today who can approach the genius of Burke and that is Dennis Lehane. If you have not had the pleasure of discovering Burke, do so with this, the first of his 11, soon to be 12, novels starring the alchoholic, Cajun detective from New Iberia and The Big Easy, David Robicheaux. Dark and edgy and existential, Robicheaux inhabits a world of demons both internal and external. With the brutality of a Peckenpah film and the honesty of Sartre essay, this detective puts the formulaic best sellers to shame. If you want to remember why you read Ross McDonald (Lou Archer) and John D (Travis Magee) then do what I'm doing: start with Neon Rain and work your way through in order. The rewards are like a Saturday at the movies when it was a dime and the serials were as good as the main feature and the Duncan Yo Yo expert could walk the dog and rock the cradle. Drop the best sellers, unless you're reading The Last Empire or The Corrections and pick up James Lee Burke. You won't regret it.