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Summary: Purple Cane Road
Review: Best Burke Yet! Beats even Dixie City Jam!. I thought Burke's newest piece is a real page turner. His Robicheaux character shows very human flaws as does his daughter Alafair. Burke's colorfull depiction of Bayou life inter-twines deeply and keeps the reader spellbound. In this particular novel there are so many enemies and villians to focus on, it makes you wondor, who really did kill his mother. I can hardly wait for the next book to arrive!
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Summary: James Lee Burke is fantastic
Review: This is a great book as with all of the Ropbicheaux novels. Burke is very talented, this book is a page turner.
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Summary: Listen To This V8 Roar!
Review: After mild disappointment with the Billy Bob Holland series, I couldn't wait for another stretch of potholed Dave Robicheaux road. "Purple Cane Road" was the precise route to page-whipping passion and heart-wrenching honesty that I'd been hoping for.This novel races along faster than any of his previous installments. Burke uses unusually short scenes to fuel this V8 engine and, though his meandering descriptions--which I personally love--are farther and fewer between, he manages to convey deep atmosphere and mood. The story follows Robicheaux's search for his mother's killers and his mission to save an abused woman on death row from lethal injection. Characters, new and old, pace back and forth over Purple Cane Road until it's clear someone will get run over by the secrets of the past. Clete tries, as always, to plant himself in the path of the plot's moving vehicle--or maybe he's the very vehicle out of control. Robicheaux, too, veers close to the edge of disaster. With tantalizing brevity, we see his troubles with his wife and his budding teenage girl, Alafair. This is the Robicheaux I missed: though he continues to grow as a person, he's still half-sinner, half-saint. Even in the last sentences, we see him take steps away from the dark voids of his childhood toward a brighter retirement. Retirement? Nah, I doubt it. Not after a not-so-subtle hint from his superior near the story's conclusion. Burke can crank his characters' engines and send them spinning over rough and twisted plotting better than most other writers. These flawed characters are so prone to make mistakes that you come to expect them; and then, unexpectedly, they manage to rise once again above their own miry pasts and do something truly honorable. Above all, despite the line-up of evil and tainted characters, Burke's writing displays honor and courage and the yearning for justice. He refuses to protect his characters from every ill-intention, refuses to set them on moral soapboxes, yet he manages to set a compass by delineating the choices between good and evil. In this manner, his cast of colorful people stands above the regular assortment of fictional cardboard props and demands to be heard, whether through a whisper or a scream. Keep 'em coming, Burke. I'm still listening.
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Summary: Not his best effort
Review: James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux books are truly great tough-guy fiction. Robicheaux, a recovering alcoholic, has a deep need for justice but is attracted to violence like a moth to a flame. I've loved all the Robicheaux books, but I confess this one seemed a little strained. I think the primary problem with the novel is that Robicheaux's battle with his darker side teeters a little too far toward making him an unattractive hero. Still, it's a good read. If you're new to the series, however, I'd read them in order, or at least start with some of the earlier books in the series. I think you need to be in Robicheaux's court coming into this one or you'll find yourself not liking him very much.
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Summary: Excellent, as always
Review: Burke is consistent, I'll give him that. His books possess an erie, ethereal quality to them, as his flawed characters wrestle with their inner demons and the hard knocks down on the bayou. This one is above average, and well worth your time. You never can tell quite where it's going, and when things come to a head it's BANG done. Realistic, moving, just damn good stuff.
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Summary: Just as good, maybe better, than usual
Review: James Lee Burke demonstrates how good crime fiction can get when its author is not only good at thinking up crime stories and telling them effectively, but also a master crafter of the English language. The story does not suffer here at all (and in the beginning I read these novels for the story), but it's the feel of the book as a whole that is so satisfying, the picture of life around New Orleans, the vignettes of Dave's relationships, and the landscape of the novel. Especially gratifying were the fleshing out of the Clete Purcel character and learning more about Dave's childhood and his relationships; especially convincing, the description of the ongoing effect of (dry) alcoholism on Dave's relationships. I would love to see more in the next book about Alafair, Dave's daughter; or a book that concentrates more intensively on Dave's relationship with Bootsie. In typical Burke fashion, the characters get killed off with increasingly speed until there are only a few possibilities for finding "whodunit", but in this case the end is not only exciting, it refuses to descent into the typically moralistic cliches of detective fiction. An incredibly enjoyable read.
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Summary: Burke is back on track
Review: After a couple of lackluster novels that proved disappointing to his fans James Lee Burke has re-emerged as the most exciting and serious writer of popular fiction in America. Purple Cane Road, the new entry in his Dave Robicheaux series, proves to be one of his best ever. No one handles descriptive writing like Burke and while in some of his books the lush descriptive passages tend to overpower the plot, in Purple Cane Road all the elements are in balance. With a tight and complex plot, as well as a really fascinating cast of characters, this novel never loses focus and keeps the reader's attention to the very last page. For long term fans of the series there are some special pleasures. The confrontations between Dave and his now adolescent adopted daughter, Alafair, have an absolute ring of truth that anyone who has had to live with a teenager will recognize. And another regular character of the series, Clete Purcel, finally gets his chance to shine. Purcel, who does for Robicheaux what Robert Parker's Hawk does for Spenser - provide the occassional dose of serious violence to the bad guys and serve generally as back-up man and old friend, expands his regular role to include a fateful love affair with another of the characters. It is a side of Clete not shown before and makes him all the more interesting and human. And at the heart of the story is the mystery of the disappearance of Dave's mother when he was a child - an old theme that has emerged in Burke's books before but was never central to the plot until this one. Dave, who is always preoccupied with his past, has a chance to solve this mystery and put some of his personal ghosts to flight. All in all this was a wonderful reading experience and I would highly recommend this book both to those who know Burke's writing and especially to those who have never experienced him.
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Summary: Robicheaux is back and better than ever.
Review: Is there another writer whose word pictures are more picturesque than those of James Lee Burke? The Robicheaux series keeps improving. This one fills in the back story on the detective's mother's death (murder). Her death intersects with current crimes and leads Robicheaux down a twisting path filled with wonderfully colorful chaacters (both good and bad.) Much is not as it first appears. The fine line between hero and villain is often murky as some of the rogues seem to possess some redeeming qualities. Naturally each of the "white hats" is flawed, having their own demons to overcome. It's a magnificent cross section of humanity and great slice of life. The various subplots dovetail nicely into a roaring finale. The story proceeds at an excellent even pace, never forced. "Purple Cane Road" is a well told tale that keeps you turning pages and guessing up to the final page.
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Summary: Atmosphere one-ups suspense
Review: Winner of two EdgarAwards, Burke's Dave Robicheaux series has been justly praised for its lush, atmospheric prose, evocative of all that's hot and seamy in New Orleans and Louisiana life. In his latest, Robicheaux, now running a bait shop and investigating for the New Iberia sheriff, is helping out his uncouth, hard-drinking friend and former colleague in the New Orleans police department, Clete Purcell, currently a private detective. Purcell's intimidated victim, a frightened, hard-mouthed pimp, tells Robicheaux his mother was murdered by two cops, still on the job. But the pimp is murdered before Robicheaux can find out more and his killer, a clever, polite, psychopath, befriends Robicheaux's adopted daughter. Meanwhile, death-row convict Letty Labiche is scheduled for execution. Robicheaux, convinced he could have saved her and her twin from the sexual abuse they suffered as children, if he hadn't been such a worthless drunk at the time, scrambles to find new evidence to save her. The emotional content of the two cases gives rise to such heights of southern male brooding and violent impulses, heavily accompanied by deep-south olfactory sensation, that the mood-laden prose gets in the way of a complex, suspenseful story of childhood loss, class and race arrogance, greed, murder, callousness, and death-row politics.
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Summary: Always good
Review: You'd think that eventually James Lee Burke would run out of gas on the Robicheaux series, but they just get better and better, more sophisticated and complex. Maybe it's because he's taken up with the new character in Heartwood that he can keep fresh, but whatever the reason, this is a great addtion. Anybody discovering this series for the first time should go ahead and read this one, but then go back and start from the beginning --Black Cherry Blues, I think. And plan to get hungry while you read it too. And thirsty for Dr. Pepper with shaved ice.
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