Black Cherry Blues

⚖The case for it

Grief and addiction do circle back through a life, so fiction that keeps pressing the same bruises is telling the truth about how they behave. Burke earns his keep at sentence level regardless. Follow Robicheaux out of bayou country into Montana and the change of weather pulls its weight, setting his worn sorrow against a wide, indifferent expanse that owes him nothing. The danger closing in around him feels less like invention than a bill finally due. His Edgar win tracks, for me.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Burke's prose repeats its rituals: every sky catalogued, every meal of dirty rice and boudin lovingly plated, every chapter pausing for Robicheaux's remorse. Dave's dead wife visits in dreams that stop the plot cold. And the pattern (warned off, beaten, explodes into violence, regrets it) was set two books in; here it merely happens in Montana.

— the honest librarian