Jumping The Shark, Part Two

I used to loooooove James Lee Burke novels. I adored Dave Robicheaux, I loved Clete Purcell and I nearly salivated when a new book was coming out full of their adventures. I damn near shed an actual tear when thugs shot Annie in Heaven’s Prisoners, that’s how much I loved Streak Robicheaux. Burke got better and better with each book, through at least Dixie City Jam, possibly Burning Angel. His prose ran the gamut from grittingly realistic to heartwrenchingly poetic, making each moment of reading a pleasure. Now, though? I don’t care if I never read another one.

Side rant: despite my enthusiasm for these novels, I confess that one little thing, probably a personal quirky irritant, got on my Very. Last. Nerve. Somewhere around A Morning For Flamingos, when Streak is reunited with lost love Bootsie, every time they get busy Burke describes it as “she placed me inside her”. I’m not sure exactly why this irks me as much as it does, but it does to the millionth power. Perhaps it is that to me “placed” as a verb sort of implies taking something in hand, putting it somewhere and leaving it. I don’t want to upset my mother by documenting how many times I’ve Done The Deed, but for all that I can say that I do not think I have ever “placed” anyone inside anyone else. Alan reports that, with me or pre-me, he has never been “placed” either. I can’t explain exactly why, but as a description of lovemaking, “placed” just chaps my pale Irish ass. In each subsequent novel, I found myself metaphorically gritting my teeth, waiting for the obligatory Sex Scene O’ Dave & Bootsie, where she would PLACE him INSIDE HER. Damn, doesn’t this dude ever ‘possess masterfully’, or ‘mount’ or ‘fill deeply with one smooth stroke’ or even freakin’ ‘THRUST’?!?

But I’d be prepared to overlook all this placing of mes inside Bootsies if the mysteries and suspense remained solid; unfortunately they did not. Purple Cane Road really turned me against the series. I’ve seen this device before, in novels and other media, and I thoroughly, intensely despise it when some old, generally accepted fact is suddenly! surprisingly! revealed to be false! And we can solve this decades-old mystery because all of a sudden people who have kept their mouths shut for years and held close deep, dark, deadly secrets spill everything because…er, well, someone asks ‘em. They lied to police officers, they lied to close friends, but for no compelling reason, now? Hey, I’ma gonna level with you, pard.

Further, the conspiracy surrounding Mae’s death was totally unbelievable, in my opinion. It’s not tragic enough that Streak’s mom abandoned them and died young, right? No, it has to be a vast conspiracy and a nefarious cover-up by The Rich and Powerful. Screenwriters did this with the Lethal Weapon movie series, if you remember. I thought Mel Gibson’s Detective Riggs was a lot more sympathetic and more believable when he was a guy who had tragically lost his wife in a car accident, a tragedy that could happen at any time to anyone. But in LW2, when we find out his wife was targeted and deliberately murdered by South African mobsters – I’m sorry, it’s just ridiculous. More than that, it cheapens the characters as well as the story because it’s just too stupid to believe. Same thing with Robicheaux’s mom.

Disgusted with Purple Cane Road I might have been, but my mom continued to love Burke and continued to share novels so I kept reading. Around this time, the novels started getting repetitive and unsurprising. Evil blamed upon the rich and powerful while the noble poor rage against the machine – yawn. Been there, read that. Things started to get formulaic: corrupt cops, noble poor, evil rich, blah blah blah, Streak getting PLACED inside his wife, yadda yadda yadda.

The last one Mom loaned, Crusader's Cross, had it all. Bootsie was thankfully dead, but not to worry, there’s a nun handy to place Dave inside herself (I’m not kidding) and the evil, corrupt rich exploit the noble, pitiful poor throughout. Aside from the fact that most of the characters were so damn annoying that I was wishing Hurricane Katrina had claimed them all as victims, the basic premise of the mystery was utterly ludicrous. Why the Rich and Powerful Crime Family would bother to waste a minute or a dollar chasing down a runaway hooker (the impetus for the events of the novel) is completely beyond me. How and why the rich and powerful brothel-owning crime family would even take notice of a deadbeat hooker several cities away attempting to skip out on her tab is equally inexplicable. Isn’t that what underlings are for? Now, I don’t run a chain of brothels, myself, but it makes no logical sense to me that the people in the novel who do go to all the time, trouble, expense and risk-taking involved in the recapture of a runaway ho when those resources could be more rewardingly spent upon recruiting new hos. Desperation and poverty is not in short supply, after all – why waste the effort? Illogical, irksome AND includes nun-boinking. Bah - jumped the shark out yonder near the bayou somewhere along Purple Cane Road and never jumped back.

To be continued...