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Authors: James Lee Burke

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Creole Belle

BOOK: Creole Belle
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Creole Belle
Dave Robicheaux [19]
Burke, James Lee
Simon Schuster, Inc. (2012)
Tags:
Dave Robicheaux
Dave Robicheauxttt
 
Creole Belle
begins where the last book in the Dave Robicheaux series,
The Glass Rainbow
,
ended. Dave is in a recovery unit in New Orleans, where a Creole girl
named Tee Jolie Melton visits him and leaves him an iPod with the
country blues song “Creole Belle” on it. Then she disappears. Dave
becomes obsessed with the song and the memory of Tee Jolie and goes in
search of her sister, who later turns up inside a block of ice floating
in the Gulf. Meanwhile, there has been an oil well blowout on the Gulf,
threatening the cherished environs of the bayous.
     Creole Belle
is James Lee Burke at his very best, with beloved series hero Dave
Robicheaux leading the charge against the destruction of both the land
and the people he has sworn to protect.
Creole Belle
Dave Robicheaux [19]
Burke, James Lee
Simon Schuster, Inc. (2012)
Tags: Dave Robicheaux
Dave Robicheauxttt

 
Creole Belle
begins where the last book in the Dave Robicheaux series,
The Glass Rainbow
, ended. Dave is in a recovery unit in New Orleans, where a Creole girl named Tee Jolie Melton visits him and leaves him an iPod with the country blues song “Creole Belle” on it. Then she disappears. Dave becomes obsessed with the song and the memory of Tee Jolie and goes in search of her sister, who later turns up inside a block of ice floating in the Gulf. Meanwhile, there has been an oil well blowout on the Gulf, threatening the cherished environs of the bayous.
     Creole Belle
is James Lee Burke at his very best, with beloved series hero Dave Robicheaux leading the charge against the destruction of both the land and the people he has sworn to protect.

PRAISE FOR
JAMES LEE BURKE
“America’s best novelist.”
—THE DENVER POST
“James Lee Burke—muscular and elegiac, brutal and compassionate—is a Stetson-wearing, spur-jangling giant among novelists.”
—BENJAMIN PERCY, ESQUIRE
“If you believe, as Burke does, that beauty and horror go hand in hand in this life, then he can touch you in ways few writers can.”
—THE WASHINGTON POST
“Burke’s evocative prose remains a thing of reliably fierce wonder.”
—ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
“Nobody turns suspense into poetry like James Lee Burke.”
—SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
“When the literary lights of the twenty-first century go marching in, James Lee Burke will be leading the parade.”
—THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

“James Lee Burke is the heavyweight champ, a great American novelist whose work, taken individually or as a whole, is unsurpassed.”

—MICHAEL CONNELLY

L
anguishing in a recovery unit on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, Dave Robicheaux is fighting an enemy more insidious than the one who put a bullet in his back a month earlier in a shootout on Bayou Teche. The morphine meant to dull his pain is steadily gnawing away at his resolve, playing tricks on his mind, and luring him back into the addict mentality that once threatened to destroy his life and family.

With the soporific Indian summer air wafting through the louvered shutters of his hospital room, and the demons fighting for space in his head, Dave can’t be sure whether his latest visitor is flesh and blood or a spectral reminder of his Louisiana youth. Tee Jolie Melton, a young woman with a troubled past, glides to his bedside and leaves him with an iPod that plays the old country blues song “My Creole Belle.”

What Dave doesn’t know is that Tee Jolie disappeared weeks ago, and no one believes she reappeared to comfort an old man with a bullet wound. Dave becomes obsessed with the song and the vivid memory of Tee Jolie, and when he learns that her sister has turned up dead inside a block of ice floating in the Gulf, he believes that putting the evils of the past to rest is more urgent than ever before.

Meanwhile, an oil spill in the Gulf brings back intense feelings for Dave of losing his father to a rig explosion years ago. As the oil companies continue to risk human lives in pursuit of wealth and power, Dave begins to see links to the Melton sisters, even when no one else shares his suspicions. Dave’s ex-partner Clete Purcel helps him search for Tee Jolie, though Clete fears for his friend’s mental health and safety. But Clete has his own troubles, too; he’s discovered an illegitimate daughter who may be working as a contract killer—and may have set her sights on someone he loves.

Creole Belle
is a resurrection story for the ages, with James Lee Burke at the peak of his masterful career and Dave Robicheaux facing his most intense and personal battle yet, against the known and unknown forces that corrupt and destroy even the best of men.

© FRANK VERONSKY

JAMES LEE BURKE
is the author of thirty previous novels and two collections of short stories. Named a Grandmaster by the Mystery Writers of America in 2009, he has twice received their Crime Novel of the Year award. He is a Guggenheim and Breadloaf fellow and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and three of his novels (
Heaven’s Prisoners, Two for Texas
, and
In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead
) have been made into motion pictures. He lives in Missoula, Montana, with his wife, Pearl.

L
EARN MORE AT

WWW.JAMESLEEBURKE.COM

AND
WWW.JAMESLEEBURKEBOOKS.COM

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COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER

B
Y THE SAME AUTHOR

D
AVE
R
OBICHEAUX
N
OVELS

The Glass Rainbow

Swan Peak

The Tin Roof Blowdown

Pegasus Descending

Crusader’s Cross

Last Car to Elysian Fields

Jolie Blon’s Bounce

Purple Cane Road

Sunset Limited

Cadillac Jukebox

Burning Angel

Dixie City Jam

In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead

A Stained White Radiance

A Morning for Flamingos

Black Cherry Blues

Heaven’s Prisoners

The Neon Rain

H
ACKBERRY
H
OLLAND
N
OVELS

Feast Day of Fools

Rain Gods

Lay Down My Sword and Shield

B
ILLY
B
OB
H
OLLAND
N
OVELS

In the Moon of Red Ponies

Bitterroot

Heartwood

Cimarron Rose

O
THER
F
ICTION

Jesus Out to Sea

White Doves at Morning

The Lost Get-Back Boogie

The Convict and Other Stories

Two for Texas

To the Bright and Shining Sun

Half of Paradise

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BOOK: Creole Belle
9Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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