Rating: 
Summary: Somethings Actually Get Better With Age!
Review: I guess it has been about 6 years since I read James Lee Burke for the first time. Dixie City Jam was one of the best books I had ever read. That summer I went back and read all the other books of the series. They were all unbelievable, with In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead and Stained White Radiance as being the two I felt stood out the most. In fact, I think in the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead is one of the most complex, creative, and exciting books ever. How can a series get better after works like Dixie City Jam and the Electric Mist.Burning Angel was a disappointment to me. It was actually the only book in the series I was not crazy about. Fortunately I felt Caddy Jukebox made up for lost ground. Sunset Limited was good, but was an inside job. Sunset Limited I felt was the only one in the series that only people who had read past books would get. So which direction would the series go? Well Purple Cane Road answered that question and some. It was beyond awesome. I am not going to sit here and repeat plot details, only know this...James Lee Burke outdid himself and had produced a masterpiece. The book is a great mystery as usual, has great writing as usual, great charaters, great dialogue, but added to all that is an emotional intensity that we have not seen in the series before. Also, its great to see how everyone's character is aging. All I can say is if you are a fan of the series do not wait on this one. And if you have not read any of the books before...hold off on this one and either read them in order or start with Dixie City Jam. What a great book and a great series!
Rating:
Summary: Burke's Tormented Hero is Back
Review: "It was dishonest, certainly, but I don't think it was dishonorable." This sentence from the epilogue, in some ways explains the tormented mind of the hero Dave Robicheaux. In this book Dave is confronted with information that his mother was murdered. He tears away thirty years of secrets to reach those who did it, with little concern for those who get in his way. It is a wild ride. Beyond the twists and turns of Dave's mind, and the plot, is the genuine richness of Burke's writing, from the names which role off your tongue, to the rich descritiveness of every thing from charecters' clothing to the beauty of a sunset over the Bayou Teche. Treat your self to an exciting read.
Rating:
Summary: Possibly his best yet.
Review: Once again Burke balances a huge, twisted set of character against a complicated backdrop and juggles it all into place by the end. I love the sense of place and character he gives to New Orleans and his players and love to read his prose. Unlike most others in his genre (Ian Rankin being another exception) I am lapping up each sentence, not in a hurry to the stories conclusion. A head and a half above all others.
Rating:
Summary: Crime In Cajun Country
Review: I always envy the person who finds an author of the caliber of James Lee Burke for the first time. He's one of those authors who you begin to wonder "where can I get the rest of his books?" before you finish the first one. You need not have to have previous experience with the Big Easy, as they refer to it down in New Orleans and the surrounding parish towns, to come to know deeply and intimately what the locals know and do. The main character, Robicheaux, is a guy you defintely would like to have as a friend and, just as certainly, not an enemy. And then there's his sometimes-sidekick, but I'll leave all that for the first time reader to discover.
Rating:
Summary: A Road Less Traveled
Review: Most detective stories tell similar stories, deal with similar themes. You can travel in a Yugo or Cadillac and travel the same road, pass the same scenery, but in the Caddy you get a classier ride. From the opening description of the state executioner: "... his slight overbite paused above his coffee cup, as though he were waiting to speak, although he rarely engaged others in conversation.", we are in the hands of a master. If you have not yet had the pleasure of getting into the heated lives of Burke's characters, climb in, for a ride with characters with history and depth.
Rating:
Summary: Another great Dave Robicheaux
Review: I have read every single Dave Robicheaux that James Lee Burke has written. I absolutely love the characters and have come to feel like "home" when I read about them. This novel is no exception. Dave, fighting many emotional demons and childhood pain, searches against all odds for the truth about his morhter and the circumstances surrounding her death. From there, he stumbles on the usual Burke Louisiana corrupt politics, unsavory characters and the like. A good one from the getgo that ends with answers that give Dave peace.
Rating:
Summary: A Pleasure of the Senses
Review: Several years ago I listened to a book tape version of the "In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead" on a long trip. It absolutely thrilled me and made my trip a pleasure. Since that time I have devoured everything James Lee Burke has written and the Purple Cane Road is one of his very best. Reading one of Burke's books is probably one of my most treasured and looked for events as it is pure and total pleasure. I do not find myself picking up on all the typical errors that authors of ongoing serial characters make and that is a true rarity. The use of colors in Burke's books to impart emotional meaning and bathe the reader in the moment is always good in a Burke's novel but "Purple Cane Road" is nothing short of brilliant in this effect. Cannot recommend it too highly....enjoy!!
Rating:
Summary: The Best Robicheaux Book Yet!
Review: Well, what a ride! PURPLE CANE ROAD is probably James Lee Burke's best Dave Robicheaux novel yet. That statement comes without qualification because I have thoroughly enjoyed all of the books in this series. All the characters you have come to look forward to reading about are back again. There's Dave, Clete Purcell, Bootsie, Helen Soileau, Alafair and Batist. Even Tripod, Alafair's three legged pet racoon is still in the cast. What Burke does exceptionally well with this novel is introduce more interesting characters to the mix. The story also deals with obsession(s) as Dave tries to clear a woman on Death Row while finding out who killed his mother more than 30 years before. The violence that punctuates all of the novels in this series is also present here as well. Most noticeably, Clete Purcell, Dave's loyal former partner and always best-friend, seems to find more than his fair share of it. His excessive drinking and intemperate remarks and lifestyle continue in PURPLE CANE ROAD and it is during the moments when we read of these events that JLB interjects much of his pathos and humor. Clete is an extremely violent man, but it is also good to know that he is primarily on the side of right. God help the people of Louisiana if he were ever to cross over to the criminal side of the spectrum. Dave Robicheaux is obssessed by the need to find out who killed his mother Mae in 1967. Readers of this series will remember that Dave's mother abandoned him for a bouree dealer when she left while Dave was still a small boy. As a grown man and a police officer, Dave struggles to do right by her memory by re-opening the unsolved 30 year old case. Along the way, he runs into the string of sociopaths that Burke is so fond of populating this series with. All is not right in New Iberia Parish or in New Orleans, either. Cops and politicians are dirty and corrupt and James Lee Burke fully fleshes out the parasites who feed off power, money and the misfortune of others. This is a well-crafted and believeable novel, right through to the very end. When Burke leads the reader to the end of his story, there is a certain type of closure that Dave and the reader both receive. When the reader stops to consider the final outcome of the plot line, he/she will also realize that there is a certain balance to the scales of justice after all. This was a fast read and the story gripped me right from the beginning. Unlike some of Burke's other books in this series, which start out slowly and speed up, this one asks the reader to climb aboard while the train is traveling down the track at 100 mph. When I finish these books, I wonder when Burke will bring us his next installment. This one left me thirsty for more on the detective and his cohorts in New Iberia, LA. After reading PURPLE CANE ROAD, you'll never have to ask why James Lee Burke is one of only two authors to win the EDGAR AWARD twice. This man is a master of his craft and this book just proves it. Paul Connors
Rating:
Summary: Comfort food in book form
Review: Reading any book by James Lee Burke is the equivalent of going out to dinner and eating your dessert first. The author's writing just gets better and better. While a few of the earlier books tended to be rather overdescribed, Burke's got it down now to an art form-and he's at his peak in this book. The two main plotlines weave in and out like the threads in fine fabric: the decades old murder of Dave's mother, and the pending execution of one of the Labiche twins for the murder of the man who long ago sexually abused the girls. But, as always, it is the characters who carry the narrative, and there isn't a single character in this book who isn't fully realized and doesn't march off the page and right into the reader's consciousness-particularly Clete, former cop, sometime PI; big and mean and huge-hearted. There's every known (and some unknown) species of bad, semi-bad, kind-of-bad and good, kind-of-good, and both good and bad people populating these pages. There's Little Face (I marvel at this man's talent for names; it's right up there with Charles Dickens) a retired hooker, and Cora, a former film star; there are ex-cons, madames, politicians and an unlikely governor of surprising humanity. Start a trip along the violent Purple Cane Road and just see if you can put this book down!
Rating:
Summary: Burke re-defines "Ragin' Cajun"!
Review: One of the best American writers of police crime fiction today seems to be James Lee Burke. In "Purple Cane Road," Burke provides us with the latest Dave Robicheaux "Cajun fiction" mystery. He's back in Cajun country with this episode, after having "detoured" to Texas for the previous two. No matter, that. But it's good to have him "home," once again, as his ability to evoke the landscape and atmosphere of modern Cajun/Louisiana country is his strong suit. With Robicheaux, for those readers who have followed this erstwhile crime solver, we can expect more than just gumbo and etoufee as his bill of fare. A complex character himself, Robicheaux's background is more completely exposed in "Purple Cane Road." (New readers may find some of the references cloudy, or even impossible, so they may wish to do "earlier Burke" first.) In this work, Dave pursues a more personal trail. He's looking for his mother Mae, who disappeared after the death of his father in an oil rig explosion. A lead from a pimp in New Orleans sets him off when he reveals that Mae died at the hands of corrupt New Orleans cops, who also happen to be working for the mob. As typical of Burke, Dave runs a path of conspiracy and corruption that seems to permeate the entire state (could there be a more complex--read that corrupt--city in the South than New Orleans?), and in so doing, a number of sub-themes crop up. Burke appears to be at his best--or at least among his best!--in this one and previous fans or not, this is an excellent read.
| 
