{"id":3456,"date":"2026-04-20T07:43:38","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T14:43:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=3456"},"modified":"2026-04-20T07:43:38","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T14:43:38","slug":"when-evil-invades-the-bayous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=3456","title":{"rendered":"When evil invades the bayous"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux crime\/ Southern noir novels are one of Bob Moyer’s favorite series. Here’s his take on the latest.<\/p>\n

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Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer<\/p>\n

THE HADACOL BOOGIE: A Dave Robicheaux Novel. By James Lee Burke. Atlantic Crime. 477 pages. $30, hardcover.<\/p>\n

This is a big book, but then it takes a big book to hold the larger-than-life characters of Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel. Vietnam grunts, The Bobbsey Twins French Quarter patrol, and now residing in New Iberia, La., Dave is a deputy sheriff, and Clete, a private eye.<\/p>\n

They still do what they\u2019ve always done \u2014 battle evil in its many forms. In this latest installment, evil shows up when a shaggy man drops a bag with a body in it on Dave\u2019s back yard. It\u2019s Clemmie Benoit, a waitress\/hostess at Jerry Carlucci\u2019s bar\/brothel. She\u2019 was a \u201c\u2026girl with the resources of a leaf blowing across the continent,\u201d who stumbled upon something that got her killed, and that takes the rest of the book to uncover.<\/p>\n

Something is going on at Carlucci\u2019s Landing. A native of New Iberia like Dave, and also a Vietnam vet, Carlucci came back from Nam dirty. And stayed that way. He\u2019s tied up with the Mafia, led by Ludow, a man \u201c\u2026evil like a tarantula, the kind who wraps its legs around the heart of its victim.\u201d Dave and Clete keep digging away at the connections between the Mafia and Carlucci.<\/p>\n

Of course, Dave has smaller outbursts of evil to deal with. His new partner, Valerie Benoit, gets hassled by another deputy. Dave still does the Hadacol Boogie every now and then. He\u2019s a dry drunk who can\u2019t keep from taking it out on the bad guys, like the deputy and Carlucci. It\u2019s always been a problem for him, but now it\u2019s intensified.<\/p>\n

The invasion of evil into the Louisiana Bayous also intensifies, growing stronger each day, infusing the very atmosphere with the clash of good versus evil. Burke does here what he does so well, bringing the human and natural worlds into sync. As the evil inexorably moves in, accompanied by a Vietnam era helicopter with a pilot from Dave\u2019s past, the scenery resonates with the battle: \u201c\u2026the Gulf seemed to sink under the land, then swell suddenly and become a huge purple wave traveling froth-capped inland, ripping the roots of the entire environment like wet newspaper.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everyone in Dave\u2019s life is threatened here, including his daughter Alafair, the sheriff, his partner, and \u201cthe saddest man\u201d Dave\u2019s ever known, the handyman Mr. Hinch. This is a series of course, so Dave is still around at the end, and the bayou has returned to its natural calm. Although Dave\u2019s future, and that of this series, is unsettled,\u00a0we leave him unlike ever before, loved and at peace.<\/p>\n

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James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux crime\/ Southern noir novels are one of Bob Moyer’s favorite series. Here’s his take on the latest. Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer THE HADACOL BOOGIE: A Dave Robicheaux Novel. By James Lee Burke. Atlantic Crime. 477 pages. $30, hardcover. This is a big book, but then it takes a big […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1356,590,426,4],"tags":[607,1528,191,1490],"class_list":["post-3456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-fiction","category-detective-fiction-mysteries","category-popular-fiction","category-southern-fiction","tag-crime-fiction","tag-dave-robicheaux-novels","tag-james-lee-burke","tag-southern-noir"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3458,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3456\/revisions\/3458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}