Burning Angel

By: James Lee Burke

Narrated by: Mark Hammer

Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's Summary

James Lee Burke's blockbuster best-seller at a new low price!

Detective Dave Robicheaux becomes entangled in the affairs of the Fontenot family, descendants of sharecroppers whose matriarch helped raise Dave as a child. They are in danger of losing the land they've lived on for more than a century. As Dave tries to discover who wants the land so badly, he finds himself in increasing peril from a lethal, rag tag alliance of local mobsters and a hired assassin with a shady past.

©1996 James Lee Burke (P)2012 Simon & Schuster Audio

HAUNTING: A Mystical Bayou Cop Story...

In one of his best earlier (the sixth) Dave Robicheaux stories, “In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead” James Lee Burke began to explore the thin line between spirituality and mysticism. In the process he created a new genre - the metaphysical cop story. Here in the eighth Robicheaux he revisits that idea. I’m glad. You will be too, especially if you’ve started the series from the beginning.

In fact, I’d recommend that you skip right over “Dixie City Jam,” Burke’s seventh and slowest novel and come from “Electric Mists” to “Burning Angel”. You’ll miss nothing in the epic evolution of Dave, Bootsey, Alafair, and Cleetus but you’ll get to enjoy Burke’s growing his ability to explore this lyrical new story arc.

Of the eight Burke novels, I still think that the first and that “Electric Mist” are the most haunting. But with the exception of “Dixie City Jam”, they are among the absolute finest work in American detective fiction … EVER! Uh-huh…. EVER! And as always,The late Mark Hammer’s lyrical talent to create this back-bayou Louisiana world is magical. If you enjoy detective/police/thriller/mystery fiction… the Dave Robicheaux series is a must start.

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Excellent

Overall a great read, I love the details of each character's life and how they interact. I especially like the complicated Dave Robicheaux and his constant fight to stay on the straight and narrow.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Ugg

What would have made Burning Angel better?

The narration was dull and boring. It needs someone livelier.

What didn’t you like about Mark Hammer’s performance?

He sounds bored and dull.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Burning Angel?

I’m unsure. Maybe I just don’t like the subject.

Enjoyed it way more the 2nd and 3rd time around!

Great story! Initially I found it somewhat confusing but I gets better with each lesson. The key is to listen to the little stories within the bigger story. It's kinda like Where's Waldo except in this case Waldo is Sonny

disappointed

very disappointed in this story after reading so many other enjoyable Burke novels.

lazy writing, bad editing, sloppy plot

Apparently JL Burke never met a simile he could refuse - I've never seen such an overuse of similes, and to me it's a sign of lazy and heavy-handed writing.; It's a lot more difficult to write a description without a simile than with it, and it's more didactic and heavy handed to write a simile that leaves nothing for the imagination to create or enjoy. While some might say that it results in wonderful description, I say it results in a paint-by-numbers picture rather than a work of art.

And the sloppy plotting......oh, where to begin? Did everyone forget that Sonny has a look alike cousin? Why did the professional assassin make such an amateurish job of trying to kill Dave? What did anyone's recollections of their military past add to the various story lines? And why were there so many subplots?

As for the editing of the audiobook, there were extremely extended pauses - some of 6-7 seconds that made me wonder if the app had stopped working. And at one point, I heard a muted "what's wrong" at the end of the chapter, as if either the mike was still active or the editor had not trimmed out that piece of audio.

I like Mark Hammer's lazy and slow reading pace - it seems very appropriate for a deep south storyline. But he still has problems differentiating voices, and it got confusing sometimes - a really good narrator should allow you to recognize the character without hearing the name spoken.

3 of 7 people found this review helpful

What was it about again?

I'm sorry I love J Burkes books though Mark Hammer You try , Will Patton ruined Burkes books forever since he read the books with such whimsical poetry making listening to Audible a very great experience. Mark Hammer I was lucky to listen with a player that could speed up the reading since the the recorded version was so sloow, It helped a bunch, mellow reading style made it very hard to distinguish between characters, in fact this is one of the first books out of 300 that I can't even tell you what the plot was or outcome, I hate to be negative about someone making a living, I can't listen to M Hammer as a reader w/ Burkes stories, Patton where our you.

2 of 7 people found this review helpful

Great book!

James Lee Burke is a favorite but once Will Patton began reading the tales I can't enjoy the Mark Hammer as much. Sorry, just telling the truth. Still better than almost any other fiction out there IMHO. Happy listening.

0 of 2 people found this review helpful