Product Description

America's most acclaimed crime writer and winner of the 1998 CWA / The Macallan Gold Dagger for SUNSET LIMITED returns to Louisiana with his finest creation, detective Dave Robicheaux.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #778468 in Books
• Published on: 2000-07-17
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Purple Cane Road is proof positive that James Lee Burke is considerably more than a dispenser of tough and atmospheric detective yarns. His central character, Dave Robicheaux, is more than just a powerful addition to a prestigious series. We are dealing here with a stylist of the first order: a writer who has managed to seamlessly marry the hard-boiled idiom of Chandler with the atmosphere and literary elegance of William Faulkner.

Robicheaux is here plunged into his most painful and personal odyssey yet. He learns that his mother, Mae, was a prostitute who ended up drowned in a mud puddle by crooked cops in the pay of the Mob. As Dave and his partner Clete Purcell investigate, they encounter State Governor Belmont Pugh, a fundamentalist preacher; the terrifying Remeta, a super-intelligent hit man, and, most significantly, Jim Gable, owner of the mansion in Purple Cane Road, who knows more about Dave's wife then Dave himself.

As Robicheaux struggles through a morass of intrigue and double-dealing, he finds that coming to terms with his own troubled past becomes as important as identifying the his mother's killers. Burke's strategy is to subtly subvert the standard detective narrative, creating a seamy panoply of the darker side of American society. Alongside the customary imperatives of bloody violence and dangerous sexuality, Burke is able to address such issues as the growing chasm between black and white and the inequalities that have riven American society. He is a storyteller of prodigious ability and his use of language remains nonpareil:

I returned to New Orleans and my problems with pari-mutuel windows and a dark-haired, milk-skinned wife from Martinique who went home with men from the Garden District while I was passed out in a house boat on Lake Pontchartrain, the downdraft of US Army helicopters flattening a plain of elephant grass in my dreams.

THE INDEPENDENT
'The best in the Detective Dave Robicheaux series.'

Synopsis
When Dave Robicheaux discovers that his mother was a hooker who was murdered by two cops working for the Mob, his quest to find her killers begins. It brings him into contact with Jim Gable, whose mansion stands at the top of Purple Cane Road and who has intimate knowledge of Dave's wife's past.

Customer Reviews

One of the Better Entries in the Series
In PURPLE CANE ROAD Dave Robicheaux is essentially working on two separate cases. He is trying to get enough evidence to stop Letty Labiche's scheduled execution in Angola Penitentiary and at the same time Dave is also hunting for the killers many years ago of his mother, Mae Guillory. The story moves fast with plenty of action and enough colorful characters to keep it interesting. The latter include the usual Burke types such as prostitutes, pimps, a populist politician, corrupt police and just plain hardened criminals. Robicheaux's long-time friend and associate Clete Purcell defies description. We have to look long and hard to find any normal people in this book.

The best part of the story focuses on Robicheaux's search for the killers of his mother. It is here that Burke gives us another glimpse of Robicheaux's complex nature and we learn still more about his troubled past.

The best of the best
There isn't sufficient time and space to say why James Lee Burke is one of the finest writers in any genre currently active. Suffice to say its partly about his almost poetic use of metaphor, partly about an almost spookily accurate take on the human condition, and partly about that sprinkle of fairy dust which would be worth vast sums of money if you could duplicate and sell it.
For those who love the series, this is at least as good as anything else there. I would say ignore those who get too pedantic about detail and pick holes in character and plot - taken at face value, this is a superb piece of work. Enjoy.

James Lee Burke's first major disappointment
I've been reading JLB for 5 years now. I started with The Neon Rain, have read all the Robicheaux books and almost everything else. Most of the books have grabbed me and transported me to Louisiana, Montana, Texas or wherever. The stories have grabbed me by the throat and don't let go until the final page. The sense of place that JLB conveys is such that I can almost smell the Gulf. However I have a major problem with Purple Cane Road which is that I cannot accept the basic premise that Dave Robicheaux, despite his lost years as a drunk, has never once heard a rumour that his mother was murdered. Or that Clete hasn't heard anything even if Dave hasn't, especially as so many other people in the novel seem to be informed of the story, whether or not they have the full story. To me it defies belief that more than 30 years can pass without the slightest hint reaching his ears. Also in the reminicences about his childhood there seems to be a big hole in the plot in that his half brother Jimmie never gets mentioned, even in passing. In The Neon Rain we are told Jimmie is 15 months Dave's junior "... we did everything together. We washed bottles..., plucked chickens..., set pins at the bowling alley..". They were apparently inseparable. Yet not a word in Purple Cain Road. I'm looking forward to the next Robicheaux novel and just hoping that this was a temporary glitch until normal service is resumed.