FORGOTTEN BOOK: DIXIE CITY JAM

 Dixie City Jam by James Lee Burke  (1994)

Bestselling author James Lee Burke has been writing about Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux for more than 35 years; Burke will be 87 when the 24th book in the series will be published next year.  Throughout the series, Burke has shown his love and appreciation for the beauty, culture, and traditions of Southern Louisiana while, at the same time, not shying away from its history of racism and greed that persists to this day.  Robicheaux is a conplex character whose troubled past of voilence, alcoholism, and drug abuse has left its mark on a man who strives to be worthy of those he loves.

It isn't easy.  Robicheaux comes from a poor, French-speaking family that has been torn apart by betrayal.  Going against tradition, Dave has earned a college degree; he has had a short-lived and ill-fated marriage.   He encountered horrors and near death in Vietnam -- an experience that has scarred his life.  Joining the New Orleans Police Department, he is partnered with Clete Purcel, a fellow Vietnam vet who has a take-no-prisoners attitude.  Together they become the "Bobbsey Twins" of News Orleans, dispensing justice through violence and intimidation, often under a "black flag."  Despite his loutish and violent ways, Percel remains at heart a decent and loyal person whose inner demons keep leading him (and Dave) on a self-destructive course.  In the first novel in the series, Dave's drinking has led him to be fired from the New Orlens Police Department.  He meets, falls in love with, and marries Annie, a social worker.  Living in a home built in nearby New Iberia by his grandfather, Dave runs a bait shop with Batist, an illiterate Black man.  Dave eventually joins the New Iberia Sheriff's Department.  

In the second novel in the series, Dave rescues a five-year-old Columbian girl from a plane wreck in the Gulf of Mexico.  He and Annie unofficially adopt the girl, who had been piloted from her native land by missionaries; they name her Alafair, after Dave's mother.  (Burke's own daughter, Alafair, is  now a bestselling novelist in her own right.)   Alafair has a pet, a three-legged racoon called Tripod. Annie is eventually murdered by a pair of sociopathic hitmen, and Dave must cope with both his alcoholic past and his burning desire for revenge.

Dave has close ties to New Iberia and appears to know many of the wealthy people in the area.  He is respectful of the poor blacks in the area, but could never fully relate to their social standing in the South.  Race and politics play a strong role throughout the series as the powerful -- both locally and from far away -- play with the lives of those less fortunate.  Dave eventually remarries, to Bootsie, a woman suffering from lupus.  When Bitsie eventually dies, Dave and Alafair are devastated.  Later in the series, Dave marries for a fourth time, to a former nun whose experiences with evil in Latin America has steeled her for the violence that seems to follow Dave.  Throughout the series, Dave is haunted by ghosts of the recent and far past -- perhaps a result of the lingering maleria he caught while in Vietnam, or perhaps from the after-effects of drug abuse.

Dixie City Jam, the seventh book in the series helps to solidify the reputation of the novels as a direct followup to In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead.  Here's David K. Jeffrey's synopsis from the St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers:

"In Dixie City Jam, one of the best of the Robicheax series, Burke creates Robicheaux's most powerful antagonist, Will Buchalter, an incestuous, bisexual, psychopathic fascist who, with his sister, repeatedly invades Robicheaux's home and violate, terrorize, and torture both him and Bootsie.  Buchalter is a truly frightening portrait of evil.  By contrast, Burke's other villains here -- the mobsters, Max and Bobo Carlucci; the New Orlens police lieutenant on their payroll, Nate Baxter; the Channel Irish mobster Tommy Lonigham; and Manuel Ruiz, Tommy's factotum whom the Carluccis have been using to scare black drug lords out of the trade in the projects -- seem nearly tame by comparison.  Baxter's horrifyingly casual racism and power over two black collegues in the NOPD, Sgts. Lucinda Bergeron and Ben Motley; his eventual humilation; Bergeron's difficult relationship with her teenaged son, Zoot; Hippo Birnstine, the Jewish businessman who offers Robicheax thousands of dollars to find a U-Boat sunk off Louisiana's Gulf Coast, and Clete Purcel's blunt presence all contribute to the many pleasures of the book...The Robicheaux series reveals Burke's lyrical/poetic eye for setting, psychological realism, strong plotting, political concern, an traditional human values.  Burke is in the process of redefining the crime genre, and it is as exciting to witness this process as it is to read his novels."

What Jeffrey fails to add is the looming presence of the sunken Nazi submarine as a chilling symbol of enduring evil.

Burke has won Edgars for Black Cherry Blues and the Billy Bob Holland novel Cimarron /Rose, as well as being named as a Grand Master by the MWA.  He was awarded a 1998 Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in Fiction and the 2002 Lousiana Writer Award.  In addition to the Robicheaux novels, he has written twelve novels about the Holland family, including four about Billy Bob Holland and three featuring Hackberry Holland.  Burke has also pubished a number of historical novels.  His third collection of short storiesis forthcoming.

Althoug I am very partial to the Robicheaux series, any book by James Lee Burke is well worth your time.

The Robicheaux series:

• Heaven's Prisoners  (1988)
• Black Cherry Blues  (1989)
• A Morning for Flamingos  (1990)
• A Stained White Radiance  (1992)
• In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead  (1993)
• Dixie City Jam  (1994)
• Burning Angel  (1995)
• Cadillac Jukebox  (1997)
• Purple Cane Road  (2000)
• Jolie Blon's Bounce (2002)
• Last Car to Elysian Fields  (2003)
• Crusader's Cross  (2005)
• Pegasus Descending  (2006)
• The Tin Roof Blowdown  (2007)
• Swan Peak   (2008)
• The Glass Rainbow  (2010)
• Light of the World  (2013)
• Robicheaux  (2018)
• The New Iberia Blues  (2019)
• A Private Cathedral  (2020)
• Clete  (forthcoming, June 11, 2024
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