Dave Robicheaux, the grizzled and traumatised Vietnam vet turned Iberia Parish detective, first appeared in print 29 years and 24 novels ago. Since that New Orleans-set introduction to Robicheaux, The Neon Rain, James Lee Burke has established himself as the boss of Southern crime noir.
Burke’s protagonist now resides elsewhere in Louisiana, but the 25th Dave Robicheaux novel is familiar territory in many respects. For The Hadacol Boogie, Robicheaux’s close buddy Cletus Purcel, a private investigator, joins him for another ride. There’s a new character too, though, in Valerie Benoit – rookie detective and Robicheaux’s investigating partner on a case that begins with him finding a dead woman on his porch.
She’s been dumped there, it seems, by a cloaked rogue with distinct facial markings, and what follows takes Robicheaux, Benoit and Purcel to some seriously dark territory, with a hired assassin and gangster intimidation in the mix too. Burke paints a grim backdrop to all this, depicting an – historic and contemporary – undercurrent of racial unease in the Louisiana swamplands.
The Hadacol Boogie is a literary True Detective on steroids: even after 25 books it feels impossible to tire of Burke’s gnarly, bourbon-and-menace-soaked plots.
