Audiobook12 hours
A Morning for Flamingos
Written by James Lee Burke
Narrated by Mark Hammer
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
Dave Robicheaux felt the bone-grinding pain rip through his body as the .45 did its damage. Through the agonizing haze that enveloped him, he heard an almost inhuman laugh-the hideous, victorious cackling of Jimmie Lee Boggs-a sound he would never forget. It had started out as an ordinary prisoner transfer, then turned into a blood bath when the convicted murderer got hold of a gun. Robicheaux could still hear that contemptible laughter, replacing the horrors from 'Nam he relived every night, echoing in the still of his darkened bedroom. When Boggs is spotted in New Orleans, Robicheaux follows, joining a DEA sting operation in the Quarter. Poised for revenge, he prepares to face his fears and silence the laughter once and for all. But, in the murky water of the Pearl River, Robicheaux finds that some things are more important than sweet, simple revenge.
Author
James Lee Burke
James Lee Burke is a New York Times bestselling author, two-time winner of the Edgar Award, and the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in Fiction. He has authored forty novels and two short story collections. He lives in Missoula, Montana.
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The Neon Rain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Cherry Blues Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Morning for Flamingos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cadillac Jukebox "International Edition" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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Reviews for A Morning for Flamingos
Rating: 4.0353106395480225 out of 5 stars
4/5
354 ratings12 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Really enjoying this series and this one certainly didn't disappoint. On to the next one. Happy reading
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I read another novel by Burk a short while before this one, by the name of Robicheaux, and they were much of a muchness. This one was written more awkwardly and the reading was quite poor. They are both rubbish with fake recurring PTSD and female involvement and in all ways just the same.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A little bit of diminishing returns from the fourth Robicheaux book. I just wish Burke would decide to either have him be a cop or not be one. I've kinda lost count how many times he's been on and off the force now.
That being said, he created one of his better "villains" this time.
The series is still providing enough return on investment that I'll keep going for a bit yet. I trust Burke enough as a writer to not give up on him yet. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5After the emotional wringer of Heaven's Prisoners and the extreme stress of Black Cherry Blues, the previous two books in the Dave Robicheaux series, I was prepared for this one to go to some pretty dark places. And to be sure, there is some brutal action here—a shooting, a drowning, both vividly described—but there's also a gentleness and even a peace that I'd never guessed were coming, a generosity in the resolution that I found welcome. That resolution is so atypical of the thriller formula that it may leave some readers dissatisfied where it only left me surprised. Check it out for yourself, and test your tolerance for shades of gray.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5James Lee Burke's 'A Morning for Flamingos' continues the winning streak for novels in the Robicheaux series. It's the 4th, each is better than the last, and there's a couple dozen more to go. 'Flamingos' begins with Dave Robicheaux back on the local police force. Along with an incompetent partner, he's transporting a couple prisoners to a different facility when they manage to escape. One's a stone-cold killer, the other a young kid who decides to give Robicheaux a break by not killing him when he had the chance. In the subsequent effort to track down the escapees, Dave is talked into embedding himself as a disgraced cop-on-the-make in the local Mafia organization by the Feds. As with all the Robicheaux novels to date, violence, romance, tough talk, backstabbing, etc. ensue. Good guys win in the end, but not without some important topics being approached, particularly those related to soldiers who fought in Vietnam. It's a sort of time capsule of a period when Vietnam was still in mind, when crack cocaine was just ramping up, and when cops' jobs and approaches were considerably different.Robicheaux is a fascinating character. His key trait seems to be adherence to his principles, which fortunately are in alignment with our laws. He's a real badass who's happened to get shot and beaten up in every book so far, but he always manages to recover. He has a 'softer' side, if you want to call it that, with a young girl he adopted at home, and is on his 3rd wife by the end of Flamingos. He makes questionable decisions at times, which typically are principle-driven. In that respect he reminds me a bit of the Reacher character in Lee Child's series. In thinking about it, I guess his 2nd true trait is that he's action-oriented. There's not a lot of introspection involved in what he gets undertakes, although his past (he's a recovering alcoholic and Vietnam vet) does tend to haunt him. All in all, a great character in my favorite genre.I continue to marvel at Burke's writing. It's relatively easy in this genre, at least judging by what's out there now, to let the story drive the writing and most of the prose tends to be very straightforward and simple. Burke seems incapable of that style. His descriptive technique, particularly when talking about the Louisiana physical environment and the local language, adds a layer to his books that is extremely rare.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I read this book in three days. Burke's descriptions of characters and the landscape, his story-telling connect with me like no other author. I'll have to pace myself and hold the few remaining unread books to one or two a year. This story has a particularly satisfying ending and adds a new dimension for me to Robicheaux.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No. 4 in the Dave Robicheaux series. Dave is sober throughout this story, and never seems tempted to take a drink. But he is still being tormented by Viet Nam memories. He leaves his adopted daughter Alafair with a cousin and goes undercover for the DEA to bust a Mafia drug ring. He’s recruited by Minos Dautrieve, who we first met in Heaven’s Prisoners. His own reasons for getting involved in this are tied to an incident in which his partner was killed and Dave himself badly wounded while transporting two prisoners to the death house at Angola Penitentiary. One of those prisoners, Tee Beau Latiolais, a young black man, had been convicted (wrongly, Dave believes) of a murder, and it was through his subterfuge that Dave’s life was spared. Now, of course, Dave owes him one, and is determined to find out who really killed Tee Beau’s supposed victim. The DEA does not come off well, as far as backing up its operatives in a pinch. But Dave’s Mafia target, Tony Cardo, turns out to be a complicated individual with demons of his own, and a physically disabled little son he adores, leading Dave into the moral ambiguities Burke loves to explore. Dave re-connects with his first love, Bootsie, who is now a Mafia widow and can’t see her way out of the “family”. Thanks to an epilogue that ties up many loose ends, this book has a “they lived happily ever after” feel to it, as if Burke may have thought he was going to end Dave’s story here.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This series is well worth the second look I'm giving it, reading it in order including the scattered installments I'd already read. The man can just flat-out write. While the books contain all the gritty action and language and nastiness typical of the genre, Burke always manages to bring in a positive note at the end of, or even in the midst of, the turmoil. These are books that make one think; beyond the fistfights, gunshots, and plot twists, complex issues are explored. The bad guys aren't all totally bad, and the good guys -- even (especially) the protagonist -- have major flaws. And the descriptions put you right on the scene.This one starts with Dave transporting two condemned prisoners to Angola, the tough Louisiana prison where executions take place. One of the prisoners is a long-time friend, one is evil almost beyond description. But you can't count on them reaching their destination. Add in a DEA agent trying to recruit Dave for a drug sting, a drug-dealing mobster with a disabled son, an old flame of Dave's who married into the mob, and assorted other shady characters, and you have the ingredients for a thriller only James Lee Burke could concoct.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It's been a while since I read the previous installment in this series. I guess I was a little bit unnerved by some of the language in this one and it wasn’t of the cursing kind. That's saying a lot because I'm generally not made uncomfortable by such things , especially when it's necessary. I think that I did get a bit squeamish was intentional on Burke's part. While he is by no means an in your face writer, he instead sneaks it in, and artfully so. He is quite gifted in making several decades of the Southern environment, both the physical and psychological landscapes, seem within reach of the reader.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The best Dave Robicheaux novel yet. He didn't go overboard with his characters and the writing was insightful and colorful. Well written, an easy read, and a good story.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oh, this is even better than book one in the series (and notably better than books 2 and 3 where the story gets bogged down with Dave's "flashbacks" and/or scenery descriptions).It's a good thriller/mystery with a lot of characters interacting but all of it still makes sense. Robicheaux gets his butt a little kicked, but ends up doing the kicking back in the end. And the secondary storyline (or maybe it's the primary one) ends in a way that should be unsatisfying, but the characters are so well written that you still leave okay with the lack of "justice" in the traditional sense.I like that Burke has gotten over his fetish for describing the racial background of every character (though there is still some of this, it's relevant to the story for the most part), and that the flashbacks to falling-down-drunk-Dave are getting phased out of the storyline. I guess Burke realized that by book 4 we all know Dave's background so don't need to keep hearing about it.All in all, it's the best in the series so far, and I have very high hopes for number 5!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm sure I missed some things when I started this one because it's book four in a series. Dave Robicheaux is a cop, badly wounded by a prisoner transport that goes badly wrong,killing his partner. An opportunity to get revenge on the man who almost killed him arives when the DEA offer him a chance to go undercover in New Orleans.Twists and turns in this one produce an interesting read