In Creole Belle, a direct sequel to 2010's The Glass Rainbow, James Lee Burke returns to the corrupt, post-Edenic south Louisiana he knows so well. Dave Robicheaux, Burke's protagonist through 18 previous novels, gets a visit from young Cajun naif Tee Jolie Melton in the hospital as he recovers from a near-fatal shootout. She gives him an iPod with an old blues song on it, "My Creole Belle." Yet no one else has seen her--or her sister, most likely murdered--in months.
He chases her throughout the story, trying to regain her favor, never quite succeeding in convincing others that she's alive, let alone contacting him. Robicheaux's former partner, Clete Purcell, has his own demons to face, meanwhile, including an estranged daughter who may or may not be a mafia-connected assassin sent to take out various New Orleans hits. Together, Robicheaux and Clete are a pair of broken men, both struggling with how to regain their youth, their families, and any semblance of integrity or dignity along the way.
As a crime novel, Creole Belle delivers everything fans of the genre crave, and more: a masterful tale of good, evil, organized crime and the corporate-led destruction of the once-idyllic land of the Gulf Coast. Burke muses along at a steady pace, never hurrying, never stalling. He uses the modern crime novel the way a master chef uses local, organic foods to create a gastronomic feast--in this case, a classical tragedy with all the fixin's. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor