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The Lost Get-Back Boogie Paperback – International Edition, 13 Dec. 2012
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Trouble is brewing and Frank Riordan is the only one willing to stop it. As he wages a one-man campaign to shut down the local pulp mill that is polluting the air and devastating the environment, tensions are growing - and so is the level of power he's up against. It is becoming more than Frank can handle.
The man who can help already has troubles of his own. Iry Paret is trying put the past behind him, having served time for accidentally killing a man. He heads west to make a fresh start in Montana on Frank's ranch. But he hadn't expected to fall in love with the estranged wife of Frank's son, a strong, dynamic and beautiful woman who will test the limits of Iry's loyalty to his friends.
- Print length368 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherOrion
- Publication date13 Dec. 2012
- Dimensions20.3 x 25.4 x 4.7 cm
- ISBN-101409109534
- ISBN-13978-1409109532
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Book Description
About the Author
James Lee Burke is the author of many novels, and the critically-acclaimed, bestselling Detective Dave Robicheaux series. He won the Edgar Award for both Cimarron Rose and Black Cherry Blues, and Sunset Limited was awarded the CWA Gold Dagger. Two For Texas was adapted for television, and Heaven's Prisoners and In the Electric Mist for film. Burke has been a Breadloaf Fellow and Guggenheim Fellow, has been awarded the Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America and has been nominated for a Pulitzer award. He lives with his wife, Pearl, in Missoula, Montana.
www.jamesleeburke.com
Product details
- Publisher : Orion (13 Dec. 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1409109534
- ISBN-13 : 978-1409109532
- Dimensions : 20.3 x 25.4 x 4.7 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 1,144,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 32,625 in Science Fiction Crime & Mystery
- 90,251 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- 102,967 in Thrillers (Books)
- Customer reviews:
About the author
James Lee Burke is a New York Times bestselling author, three-time winner of the Edgar Award as well as the Grand Master Award from Mystery Writers of America, winner of the CWA Diamond Dagger and Gold Dagger and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, and the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in Fiction.
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Customers appreciate the writing style. They find it engaging and descriptive, with vivid word pictures.
"...He’s elegant, elegiac, deeply human: his heroes and heroines are compromised, ambivalent, trying to do the right thing while fighting their own..." Read more
"Great writing style but not finished it yet" Read more
"...This one does not disappoint. Stunning word pictures as always." Read more
"As usual he delivers a well developed story with beautiful imagery..." Read more
Customers find the story compelling and exciting until the end.
"...It is a compelling story one I could not put down...." Read more
"...reading James Lee Burke and this was no different, it was exciting to the last page." Read more
"As usual he delivers a well developed story with beautiful imagery..." Read more
Top reviews from United Kingdom
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- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 November 2020Phew. After a long stretch through the Robicheaux novels a few years ago I’m plumbing all the other depths James Lee Burke has dug. The Holland family sagas, and even the unrelated ones like this.
Lee Burke is no ordinary crime writer. He isnt really even a crime writer at all. He’s a poet of the American West and of the Deep South, conjuring pictures of tormented souls stealing beauty from a grim landscape of deceit and disappointment. He’s elegant, elegiac, deeply human: his heroes and heroines are compromised, ambivalent, trying to do the right thing while fighting their own demons.
This particular book is about family and doing the right thing at whatever cost, about the uncontrollable urges inside violent men. There are time when I think I don’t need any other writer (and there are times when I don’t). Right now, blinking back the tears, I really think this guy has got it all. This is literature, not pulp fiction. Classic.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 September 2021IN MY OPINION ONE OF TODAYS FUTURE LITIRARY GENIUS'S
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 May 2021I have read, and collected, just about everyone of JLB's books, many first editions and some signed. This, of all the books he has written, is up therer in my top 5. It is a compelling story one I could not put down. Its a mystery to me why it was turned down by so many publishers before being published by LSU press.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 August 2010"The Lost Get-Back Boogie," (1986), was the fifth novel published by American author James Lee Burke, writer of The New York Times bestselling Dave Robicheaux series. It preceded The Neon Rain, first published novel in the Robicheaux series of southern noir mysteries/police procedurals. "The Lost Get-Back Boogie," a crime drama, was, according to the author's website, rejected 111 times over a period of nine years; upon finally being published by the Louisiana State University press, it was nominated for a hugely prestigious Pulitzer Prize.
The protagonist of "Lost Get-Back," is Iry Paret, who, like the detective Robicheaux, is of Cajun ancestry, and is still reliving the nightmare of his wartime service-- in Paret's case, in Korea. He too has a drinking problem, difficulty with authority figures, and a tendency to violence. There's no question but that he echoes J.P. Winfield, a country music guitarist, and Avery Broussard, an oil rig roustabout, both of whom have a weakness for drink, protagonists from Burke's earliest published work,Half of Paradise. There's even less question that he is more or less an early version of Robicheaux. Paret's arc within this book even encapsulates the Robicheaux series, which was initially set in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the American Gulf Coast; then moves to the mountainous state of Montana. In this novel, the protagonist's tale begins in Louisiana, Gulf Coast country; he then moves to Montana. Paret situates himself, in Montana, in the Bitterroot River valley, near the Swan Valley. (Both Bitterroot and Swan Peak will turn up as titles in the later Robicheaux series.)
We meet the young cajun Paret, a country music guitarist, as he is being released from Angola, the notorious Louisiana state prison. And, more than anything else, it sometimes seems to me, in Burke's work, we'll enjoy some of the most beautiful, knowledgeable writing ever committed to paper about the flora, fauna, geography, and human occupants of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, now so much in the news. This area is more or less Burke's home turf: he was born in Houston, Texas in 1936, grew up on the Texas-Louisiana gulf coast, attended Southwestern Louisiana Institute; later received B. A. and M. A. degrees from the University of Missouri in 1958 and 1960 respectively.
However, a jailhouse friend of Iry's, the jazz musician Buddy Riordan, calls him to Montana, and there he goes. And I'd be the first to admit that Burke describes the flora, fauna, geography, and human occupants of Montana beautifully: his descriptions just lack the passion and power of his Gulf Coast work. At any rate, Buddy's father is the first of the old guy environmental nuts, pursuing their agendas without taking into account the jobs of their neighbors, whom we will meet in Burke's Montana work. Needless to say, it makes the Riordans locally unpopular, and from that bad things start to happen.
I found the lengthy descriptions of drinking and drugging a bit tedious after a while. The dated jazz hipster slang was even more so: endless descriptions of a person as a "cat," too much of "daddio;" and why oh why did Iry and Buddy call each other "Zeno?" Nevertheless, Burke gives us virile and vivid prose in this book, and unleashes a powerful sucker punch of an ending that I didn't see coming.
Over the years Burke worked as a landman for Sinclair Oil Company, a pipeliner, land surveyor, newspaper reporter, college English professor, social worker on Skid Row in Los Angeles, clerk for the Louisiana Employment Service, and instructor in the U. S. Job Corps. His work has twice been awarded an Edgar for Best Crime Novel of the Year. At least eight of his Robicheaux novels, including the more recent Jolie Blon's Bounce,Cadillac Jukebox, and Purple Cane Road have been New York Times bestsellers. Truly, he's worth reading, tho "Lost Get-Back," Pulitzer nominee or not, may not be the place to start.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 December 2020Great writing style but not finished it yet
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 August 2017This was my first novel by this author and I didn't know what to expect. I enjoyed the writing style, putting the reader in the prison nicknamed Angola, in the Louisiana swamps, and finally in the wonderful mountains of Montana (I know they are because I visited them many years ago). The prose is wonderfully descriptive, and the dialogue between the two ex con friends just right. Yes a lot of it is American slang but it fits in perfectly. The drinking, smoking and drug taking are wonderfully excessive (don't think I'd have kept up with them for long), and the plot, although simple, is all it needs to keep the tale moving along with a nice undercurrent of blues, country and jazz music in the background. I enjoyed it.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 August 2021What is there to dislike? JLB really takes you into the period, you feel the atmosphere, JLB the master
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 January 2019This was my fourth book by JLB and as with the others I found it compulsive reading. The musical angle gave it an additional interest
Top reviews from other countries
- Michael RyanReviewed in Canada on 29 August 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars On the road revisited
A sprawling novel that captures the foibles and excesses of a lifestyle founded in cynicism and self-indulgence. A book that is as compelling in it's own way as "On the Road" and just as hard to put down. This is a literary work, not an airport novel. Hope for more.
- Paul CasselReviewed in the United States on 27 July 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars A Unique Experience
I've never had a reaction to a book like I have had with this one. It's easily a five star novel highlighted by gorgeous writing with both a character study of the protagonist and the his societal context.
However, at the 30% mark, I'm done reading it. The reason may sound bizarre - it's too realistic for me. I've spent all too much of my life mired in the world depicted dealing with the tedious, dead end characters that infest it to find it enlightening or amusing. I never wish to experience it again.
This book drags the reader through the annoying self-destructive behavior of that world. It's as if these guys lust to fall back into the mire if they, through serendipity, find themselves a step above. For example, time and again the only thing these dimwits need to do to dig themselves out is to stay out of the hillbilly bars but they insist on inhabiting them where they spark serious conflict.
While not (so far) doing a female version study, they are as predictable as the males and even more tedious because they inevitably spawn descendants who will have no role models aside from the morons getting into bar fights and pursuing rock.
This is a wonderful novel by a terrific writer which is why I want no more of it.
- Willie H.Reviewed in Spain on 10 November 2024
3.0 out of 5 stars No empathy for the characters
Started ok but just didn't get to the next level that the authors books normally do. No empathy for the main characters and if anything just became annoying. Notbone of his best stories.
- EulalieReviewed in France on 3 March 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars The lost get back boggie
It was a fine reading and I enjoyed it very much and Now Ignace only one James Lee Burkés book left to read ! I read them all during 2020 ! I’m a French woman.
- wendyh825Reviewed in the United States on 2 August 2024
4.0 out of 5 stars Ok
It was predictable. No surprises. I gave it four stars because of Burke's awesome way he can turn a phrase. You do feel like your there.