Old Ghosts and Old Wounds Dominate Newest Burke Novel
By Leah Stratmann December 4, 2003 Issue

Anyone familiar with the 22 preceding novels by James Lee Burke featuring Dave Robicheaux already knows trouble, personal sorrow and violence follow Dave like a shadow. Last Car to Elysian Fields is no exception as Burke eloquently seams together several stories, another hallmark of this series that only seems to get better with each outing.

Robicheaux begins by looking into the brutal beating of priest, who is also a friend. The New Orleans based rabble-rousing priest is generally at the center of controversy but not usually a victim. Robicheaux and ex-cop pal Clete Purcell quickly determine that a minor porn star and strong-arm guy beat the priest, but the reason remains unclear. While in New Orleans, the priest asks Dave to look into the presence of a toxic landfill on the land of relatives of a legendary blues singer and composer who is sent to Angola prison in the 1950s and never heard from again.

Meanwhile, back in the somewhat sleepy town of New Iberia, La., where Robicheaux is a member of the sheriff’s department, three teenage girls die in a fiery crash after being illegally served daiquiris from a drive-through stand.

Three seemingly disparate story threads are all going on simultaneously. Throw in the usual oddball characters Burke so vividly creates such as Fat Sammy Figorelli, the drug and porn king, a crazed Irish contract killer, hookers, former friends and lovers and you have the makings of a typical outing with Dave Robicheaux. Each character is fully developed, although the author expends few words in doing so.

Burke’s writing is so precise and so much like poetry, you start to sweat or shiver as he sets the scenes moving the story along. Descriptive atmosphere fills each book as fully as do his characters. “The western sky was still pale blue, the clouds like strips of fire, the leaves of the cypress and willow trees golden and motionless in the dead air. But the closed shutters on the houseboats and the lines of ducks and geese transecting the sun made something sink in my heart, as though I were the last man standing on earth.”

The author and Robicheaux share some traits. Both are recovering alcoholics and Robicheaux’s personal sorrow leads him close to the very tempting relief of taking a drink and he has reasons aplenty to do so. His wife has recently died, his daughter is far away at college and the house his father built has burned to the ground. He’s sold his bait and tackle business; leaving him only with a rented house on Bayou Teche and a three-legged raccoon named Tripod.

Burke’s descriptions of Robicheaux emotional response to events and locales and his struggle to remain sober, give the reader deep insight into alcoholism, a common disease not easy for non-alcoholics to understand. The story lines are solid and are all tidily wrapped up by the end. Along the way, Robicheaux grows as well, as he does in every episode of this most satisfying series. If you haven’t yet taken a ride with Burke, it’s time to get on the Last Car to Elysian Fields. (Top)

Last Car to Elysian Fields, Simon & Schuster, 335 pp, available at local libraries and retail booksellers.

Back to Book Reviews