Villainy and Murder in the Louisiana Underworld

Several of James Lee Burke’s more recent novels about Louisiana lawman Dave Robicheaux have been examples of style over substance. This is not meant as a complaint, exactly; not when you’re dealing with a stylist whose poetic way with words is stunningly effective, whether being used to describe bayou tranquillity or barroom violence. Unlike others in the literary brother- and sisterhood who go for the flow even when it results in meaningless babble, Burke crafts paragraphs as cohesive as they are mesmerizing.

Here’s a sample from the 10th and current entry in the Robicheaux series, “Jolie Blon’s Bounce” (Simon & Schuster, $25, 349 pages). It’s a description of the protagonist/narrator’s reaction to a melody by Guitar Slim.

“Without ever using words to describe either the locale or the era in which he had lived, his song re-created the Louisiana I had been raised in: the endless fields of sugarcane thrashing in the wind under a darkening sky, yellow dirt roads and the Hadacol and Jax beer signs nailed to the side of general stores, horse-drawn buggies that people tethered in stands of gum trees during Sunday Mass, clapboard juke joints where Gatemouth Brown and Smiley Lewis and Lloyd Price played, and the brothel districts that flourished from sunset to dawn and somehow became invisible in the morning light.”

It may seem picky to want a strong, original main theme to accompany such appealing riffs. On occasion, such as Robicheaux’s last outing, “Purple Cane Road,” Burke provides it. “Bounce” settles for variations on earlier compositions.

The book is not shy of event, what with Dave puzzling through two murders--the victims are a teen queen and a drug-addicted prostitute--while battling his own addiction to painkillers, the result of a brutal and emasculating beating at the hands of a septuagenarian hard case named Legion Guidry. But much of it seems like a familiar refrain. The persecuted, immensely talented Cajun blues singer, the saintly drifter, the scion guarding the secret scandal of his aristocratic family, the offspring of a Mafia goon suffering from sins of the father, and the smarmy show-biz carrion have all drifted through previous Dave capers.

So have the incredibly evil, possibly supernatural villains, though, as the author explains on the abridged audio version of the novel (though not on the unabridged), these particular bad boys--the aforementioned Legion and a Bible drummer named Marvin Oates--are part of his first use of biblical allegory.

The specific reference is the New Testament tale in which Jesus Christ encounters a man possessed by an evil demon named Legion. Christ casts out the demon and sends it into the body of a herd of swine that waddles into the ocean to drown. That Burke is able to work his novel to a point where a Christlike figure (not Dave, I should note) confronts the vile Guidry within casting distance of pigs is no minor achievement.

He even manages to bring this off while stirring up considerable suspense over the fate of his hero’s only friend, Clete Purcel, who lies bleeding to death while the epic good versus evil battle takes place. Since Purcel, one of the most likable reprobates in modern fiction, has provided tang throughout the Robicheaux saga, it seems unlikely that he’ll be joining Legion and the pigs in the nether world. But one can never be sure about these things. Authors, even those as canny as Burke, can and have made such fatal mistakes.

Adultery and Homicide in N.Y.’s High Society

Jane Stanton Hitchcock’s “Social Crimes” (Talk Miramax Books, $22.95, 368 pages) is a novel of adultery and homicide among Manhattan’s elite that reads like Dominick Dunne lite. The book’s heroine and narrator, Jo Slater, announces at its start, “Murder was never my goal in life.” Regrettably, her real life goal is much less compelling: She wants to reign as the WASP queen of New York society. What else might we expect from a woman who has chosen Marie Antoinette as a role model?

Hitchcock keeps the reader hanging on for nearly two-thirds of the book with a plot that plays out like a high society “All About Eve,” in which an outwardly demure, impoverished little French countess enters Jo’s perfect life and rapidly replaces her in it. Students of the East Coast social swim may detect some allusions to actual people or events hidden in the author’s fiction. Such gossipy frills notwithstanding, the book takes a few steps down in class once the usurpation is complete.

As Somerset Maugham, Truman Capote and other acclaimed chroniclers of the upper crust have shown us, these spoiled, elite monsters are best observed through the eyes of an observer who is at least partially objective. By allowing Jo to tell us her own story, Hitchcock may have hoped to make the reader a co-conspirator in the eventual murder plot. But, as the self-absorbed widow grows ever more unpleasant and her homicidal preparations more convoluted (involving a prostitute who is the countess’ spitting image, among other incredible elements), readers may decide to bid her a premature farewell and pick up the latest issue of Vanity Fair instead.

Racial Violence on the

Mean Streets of L.A.

With last year’s “The Orange Curtain,” John Shannon’s series featuring private detective Jack Liffey made the successful leap from paperback originals into hardcover. That strong, socially conscious hard-boiled tale charted a number of nightmare offramps along the Southern California dream freeway. The author’s new “Streets of Fire” (Carroll & Graff/Otto Penzler, $24, 230 pages) is even more relentless in its portrait of Los Angeles as Trouble City.

As Shannon sees it, one racist cop could trigger Armageddon with a careless chokehold. In this case, it results in the death of a popular Dodger pitcher who also happens to be a black Muslim. Liffey observes the rapidly spreading riot mood at mean street level. A detective pal (Gary Phillips’ series sleuth Ivan Monk) has passed him a job. A respected member of the black community needs someone to find his adopted son who has gone missing with his white Simi Valley girlfriend.

Their trail takes the humane investigator into an assortment of angry camps--from white supremacist to black separatist--all gearing up for the inevitable confrontation and bristling with hatred for anyone poking into their affairs. That would be Liffey.

If trying to stay alive and get his job done were not challenge enough, he is also being forced to come to grips with his muddled personal life.

Shannon’s lean prose makes good use of local history without letting it slow down his hero’s progress. When added to his deadpan approach to L.A.’s theater of the absurd atmosphere, this should be enough to satisfy anyone seeking a strong sense of place in a novel, particularly one that also provides a powerful crime yarn with a full-blown riot payoff.

Dick Lochte, the author of the prize-winning novel “Sleeping Dog,” and its sequel, “Laughing Dog” (Poisoned Pen Press), reviews mysteries every other Wednesday.