I started out writing a review of The Hadacol Boogie, the most recent Dave Robicheaux thriller by James Lee Burke, but then decided to critique the entire series instead.

Burke is a darling of thriller writers and has penned almost 50 novels. Half of them deal with Robicheaux, a Louisiana detective with a drinking problem. Every now and then, Dave falls off the wagon — usually after a tragedy — and goes on a bender of epic proportions.

Two of Burke’s Robicheaux novels have been adapted as films: Heaven’s Prisoners and In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead. For my money, Heaven’s Prisoners, the second book in the series, is the best. It introduces Alafair, Dave’s adopted child, and its plot blends great detective work, unthinkable tragedy, and a femme fatale for the ages.

Get the book or rent the movie. Maybe both.

I actually met the real Alafair. She’s Burke’s daughter and is also an accomplished thriller writer. Alafair Burke has authored 15 books and, with Mary Higgins Clark, co-authored eight others. There must be something in the Gulf Coast water where her father grew up. (James Lee Burke now resides in Montana; Alafair lives in New York City.)

The elder Burke is justly famous for his prose — which has been compared to that of Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Hardy — and for writing books with a high moral code.

The volume prior to The Hadacol Boogie was Clete, which features (for the first time) the character Clete Purcel as narrator. Clete is Dave’s foil: a crude, overweight, often-drunk, frequently wounded best friend. He was once Dave’s partner in the New Orleans Police Department and was fired for corruption (which surely must be unique in the history of the Big Easy) and is now a private eye. Clete appears regularly in the Robicheaux thrillers, and in the time-honored tradition of sidekicks, he does things his friend won’t.

Dave left the NOLA PD and, after trying out as a fishing-store owner, took a badge as a deputy in a Louisiana parish. When not solving crimes among the lowlifes, he often fishes in the bayou backwaters with Clete. Both men are showing their age, and although they should be in their late 80s by now (since they fought in Vietnam), in the books, they’re only pushing 50 or so. Mercifully, they no longer pursue younger women.

Some of the characters in the Robicheaux series are so unsavory that readers will want to throttle them even though they’re fictional. The savory ones include Dave’s former wives (all dead; one murdered and one an ex-nun), his long-suffering female boss at the parish precinct, and, of course, Clete.  

I suppose Clete is also unsavory, but one keeps rooting for him to bail Dave out. Both men have honor, although Clete is reluctant to extend his ethical code to the real pariahs.

Alafair Robicheaux often returns from college and sees her father and his pal for what they are. She knows instinctively that they’ll try to set things right, even if they bend (or, in Clete’s case, break) the law.

As I said, James Lee Burke is a descriptive writer, as in this passage from Clete:

“The Quarter smells like medieval Europe probably did, always dark, and except for high noon, it’s always in shadow. It smells like storm sewers and night damp and lichen on stone and kegs of wine stored in a cellar and smoked fish hanging in the open-air market. The same with people. Their eyes are different, like they’re walking past you but they don’t see the modern world, like Quasimodo clomping along on the cobblestones.”

In The Hadacol Boogie, Dave says:

“Once committed to a principle or his word, Clete Purcel was the most undaunted man I ever knew…literally capable of ripping off a neo-Nazi’s arms and using them to beat him to death.”

He then goes on to describe how his friend built a monument “on Bayou Teche” to a woman and her children murdered in an Auschwitz gas chamber and often leaves flowers on it.

If I have any criticism of the series, it’s that Burke is sometimes too literary, too descriptive, which slows down the investigative action. And I could do with less patois, such as “What’s the haps” and “noble mon.” Also, Dave routinely gives bad guys the benefit of the doubt, whereas Clete would rather give them the benefit of his fists.

But I’m nitpicking. Backcountry Louisiana and its people’s language play a big part in these terrific thrillers. As does the city of New Orleans itself. In fact, after reading the Dave Robicheaux series, I’ve developed a taste for po’boys and beignets.

A warning for the weight conscience: If you read these books, so will you.

Since 2005, Lawrence De Maria has written 40 thrillers and mysteries on Amazon.