Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
Clete Purcel - private investigator, former New Orleans cop, and war veteran with a hard shell covering a few soft spots—is Dave Robicheaux’s longtime friend and detective partner. But he has a troubled past. When Clete picks up his Caddy from a local car wash, only to find it ransacked by a group of thugs tied to the drug trade, it feels personal—his grandniece died of a fentanyl overdose—and his fists curl when he thinks of the dealers who sold it.
As Clete traces the connections in this far-reaching criminal enterprise, Clara Bow, a woman with a dark past, hires Clete to investigate her scheming, slippery ex-husband, and a string of brutal deaths link back to a heavily tattooed man who lurks around every corner. Clete experiences shockingly lifelike hallucinations and questions Clara’s ulterior motives when he and Dave hear rumours of a dangerous substance with potentially catastrophic effects. The thugs who destroyed his car might have been pawns in a scheme far darker than they could’ve imagined.
For decades James Lee Burke has not just been on crime writing’s top shelf, he’s been the equivalent of a ‘locked in the cabinet for special occasions’ bottle; among the highest quality you can find. Fortunately we all get to read him, if we wish. Burke, who turned 88 in December, is aging like a fine bourbon, or a Tom Brady or LeBron James, continuing to perform at the highest levels far beyond when most have retired. His Civil War saga Flags on the Bayou won last year’s Edgar Award for Best Novel; Burke is the first American to win ‘the Oscar of Crime Writing’ thrice.
Now in Clete, he brings us a fresh take on his beloved series starring Dave Robicheaux.
Also last year, the great author SA Cosby, one of a newer generation of writers who could take the baton from James Lee Burke as the crime genre’s best, posed a question on social media about the toughest characters in mystery fiction. Interestingly, many prime contenders were sidekicks, such as Mouse from Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins books or Joe Pike from Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole tales.
And of course another character to get plenty of mentions was Clete Purcel himself, the long-time friend and ‘podner’ of aging Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux. Or as Burke has described him over the years: an ‘albino ape’ in a porkpie hat, a trickster of folklore, a quasi-psychotic jarhead who came back from Vietnam with a chest full of medals and memories he never shared.
In Clete, Burke takes us inside the viewpoint of this ‘archangel in disguise with strings of dirty smoke rising from his wings’. After his car is ransacked by thugs tied to a Mexican cartel, Clete decides to trail the culprits; meanwhile he’s hired by mysterious Clara Bow to investigate her slippery ex-husband. Then there’s deaths that seem linked to a heavily tattooed man. A hallucinating Clete and Robicheaux hear rumours of a lethal new drug perhaps tied to the thugs who destroyed his car.
Clete is a great read, especially for longtime fans of Burke’s work. While it centres ‘the sidekick’, in the same way that Michael Connelly’s book starring Mickey Haller or Renee Ballard can give us a fresh perspective on Harry Bosch – an outside view rather than through the eyes of the longtime hero - Burke’s terrific change-up also gives readers a new perspective on Clete and Dave both.
Vivid and violent, Clete skitters along on Burke’s masterful prose, soaks us in its Louisiana setting, has more murky layers than a swamp, and gives readers long-time and new a haymaker of a read.
[This review was first written for Deadly Pleasures magazine in the United States]
Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.
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