Burning Angel by James Lee Burke

Several months ago, I bought my auntie Burke's novel "In the Electric Mist with the Confederate Dead".  I knew she'd like it.  She loved it.  And in that moment, I decided to get her ALL of Burke's Robicheaux novels.  Why not? He's genius.  And if she was going to read the series, well then, I needed to re-read it- in part for the 3rd time.  This decision was bolstered when Marianna told me that the woman to whom she gifted Neon Rain because she had expressed an interest in / affection for Burke, didn't remember the next day that she had been given the book.  I'm seeing that waiting to start a book club until I am in an Assisted Living facility might be a bad idea.  So - I'm re-reading but am woefully far behind her.  This is, in part, by necessity as we are sharing books and sometimes, she isn't returning them one at a time.  All of this is just background.

I finished Burning Angel 4? 6? weeks ago.  Closed the book and asked myself "Who is Charlie?"  I did a google search without finding the answer.  I asked Marianna who gave he a history of "Charlie" in the Vietnam war.  Yeah- I knew that but I didn't think that was the answer.  I went back to my Australian blog to see if I had written anything that might help me --- to find that at that time I asked "Who is Charlie?"  So, given my LONG-STANDING confusion and the fact I had just dropped off the next 3 novels at my aunt's and it would be quite a while before I could start Cadillac Jukebox - I sat down and started to re-read the book.

Burning Angel is not one of my favorite Burke novels.  I can't tell you exactly why - though it is much easier to keep track of which bad guy is which (John Polycarp Giacano (aka Johnny Carp or Polly Gee), Emile Pouge and Patsy Dapolito) when you read it twice in rapid succession.  The best parts - similar to many (or all) Burke's novels - the crossing over of the supernatural into Dave's world... real? a dream? a dry-drunk fantasy?  a ghost? an angel? Especially the climax!

and Burke's ability at descriptive and beautiful writing.

Emile Pouge:  "I smelled him before I saw him.  His odor was like a fog, gray, visceral, secreted out of glands that could have been transplanted from animals.  His head was a tan cannonball, the shoulders ax-handle wide, the hips tapering down to a small butt that a woman could probably cover with both her hands.... His teeth were like tombstones when he grinned."

Julia Bertrand:  "The whites of Julia's eyes were threaded with tiny red veins; the lashes stuck together with mascara.  I thought of a face painted on a wind-blown pink balloon that was quivering against its string, about to burst."   "When Ruthie Jean took a chair at the next table, Julia began to laugh.  It was a braying disconnected sound, ongoing, like furniture falling down stairs."

And the lines that come from his characters... why don't I know people who speak like this?

"Where's Avon's answer to the Beast of Buchenwald?"

"I'm talking about guys here who think the manual of arms is a Nicaraguan baseball player."

Finally - there's this.  It makes me think of my mother who in her last months was so sad in her life and haunted by all the trauma she had endured.  ...."The whiskey that cauterizes memory and transforms electrified tigers into figures trapped harmlessly inside oil and canvas."  Though I am not sure that those tigers ever got trapped.  Sometimes they just got meaner.