Black Cherry Blues

⚖The case for it

Burke writes Louisiana and then Montana so densely that “setting becomes a character in and of itself,” and readers come for the prose before the plot: “beautifully written in a lyrical style that few authors can match,” “Southern fried at its most delicious.” Robicheaux carries his guilt and his drinking history as real weight rather than backstory, which readers rank among the genre’s fullest detectives. Alafair gives the darkness somewhere warm to rest, and Clete supplies the volatility and the jokes. Readers describe the shape as “hauling the boulder again and again only to watch it roll downhill.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

“Almost nothing happens in the first half,” and the move from the bayou to Montana costs the series the Cajun texture that defines it for a vocal minority. The dream sequences pile up until one reader asks “how many freaking dreams does a person have to read.” The “level of violence seems gratuitous and too much” for what the story needs. Dave takes his young daughter along on errands that readers call reckless rather than heroic. And structurally, “too much stuff happened to Robicheaux, rather than him doing things.”

— the honest librarian

7h

honest hours

10

sittings