Purple Cane Road

This is another workmanlike novel from Mr. Burke, and as such merits reading. That said, I admit that I’m feeling overexposed to Dave Robicheaux, just like the overexposure I eventually came to feel about Lew Archer, Travis McGee, Philip Marlowe and more recently Jack Reacher. “Purple Cane Road” is a good read. If you haven’t read the earlier Burke books in the series, or cannot get enough of them, you’ll enjoy this book which deepens one’s understanding and affection for Robicheaux. Even if you’re tiring of Robicheaux, you’ll still enjoy it. If you’re burned out, I doubt the book will bring you back into the fold.

IMHO this book was a 5 star read. The author really struck a chord for my preferences in reading. Its exactly the type of book I want to read with no really feely type of emotional BS in love relationships yet there was a love interest woven into the story line. The author did a very nice job of putting this mystery into something captivating for the reader. I usually will not spend the time to write a review regarding books that are less than stellar. Words come to mind like “brutally honest” and weather that reflects the genre of the story. A gritty story line located in the parishes around New Orleans held my interest thru out the entire book. Good character development with its dark undertones. I could easily see this story being made into a motion picture with Matthew McConaughey playing the part as the sheriff. If you happen to have caught that TV series a few years back, True Detective, with Harrelson and McConaughey, you’ll know exactly what I’m attempting to describe here. For anyone who enjoys a dark tough assed mystery read, this is it. My compliments to you on this one Mr Burke. Nice job. (I know that my thoughts may be somewhat fragmented here. I’m not real good at writing these reviews, but I know what I like and I liked this story.)

This is the second book I’ve read by this author. I enjoyed it, but with that said, I don’t find myself craving more by this author. I will admit James Lee Burke excels in creating interesting characters and vivid imagery, but the story meanders to excess at times. One example is where a character is relating a second hand account of a decades old incident. How does a person who wasn’t present have any way to describe every minute detail related to sights, sounds, smells, sensations and the like surrounding the event? It paints a detailed account, but nevertheless; highly unlikely to ever happen. Chances are in real life, the story teller would have summed up the second hand account in a few paragraphs at best.

Overall, it was an engaging story and I’m glad I read it.

I often scoot over Burkes cardboadiness of Dave Robichaux because of his remarkable talent for setting…no one has ever captured the humidity, the culture, the mutual separateness and togetherness of race, the uniqueness of south Louisiana like he does.

In this episode Dave is still with the New Iberia Sheriffs, Clete is still at his side, he and Bootsie are in a comfortable place, and dear Alafair is now 16. And he dives into corruption as usual, murder, past histories, and lurid sex trade.

Dave still has that heavy load, the inability to laugh in a culture that laughs in the face of constant troubles, and anger and violence that seems to erupt at the wrong times. But its better than usual, several good stories threaded in, and Bootsie is a bit more involved. Sometimes Burke tends to forget t odd times that Dave has a wife and kid.

I’ve been binging on this series lately and, having started at the beginning, have gotten this far. I don’t know if I’ll make it all the way to the end. Mr. Burke is a good writer, he handles setting, character, dialogue very well. He’s very adept at working around the constraints usually imposed by a first-person narrative style. My one complaint, and it’s a common flaw with writers in this genre, is he says the dumbest things about the firearms in use. He did finally quit referring to the “receiver” of Robicheaux’s .45 and started properly referring to it as the slide. )Auto pistols have a frame and a slide, they don’t actually have a receiver, like a rifle.) He speaks of shotguns “sawed off at the end of the pump”. There’s actually nothing properly called a “pump” on a pump shotgun, when they’re cut down, the barrel is usually cut down to the end of the magazine tube. A few books back he identified an M-16 as having been issued early in the Vietnam conflict as indicated by the “..knob welded onto the bolt…” to ensure functioning. Actually, it would be impossible to weld anything onto the bolt of an M-16, then the bolt wouldn’t fit into the bolt carrier and nothing would function. The earliest M-16’s had problems and later versions had a forward assist, but it was built in from the get-go, not welded on, and wasn’t a knob, rather it was a sort of pin that could be smacked to drive the end into serrations machined into the bolt carrier to ensure the bolt’s going into battery. Most AR’s today still feature this but they’re really not necessary with today’s ammo and proper maintenance. Finally, I recently read about some cases (not casings, please) being picked up that were “aluminum cased reloads.” Wrong again. Aluminum cased ammo is an economy item because aluminum is much cheaper than brass. Unfortunately, aluminum lacks brasses elasticity and for that reason can’t be reloaded. Finally, the guns usually used don’t often produce the kind of dramatic effect we usually see in our fiction. Most gunshot wound are disappointingly mundane in appearance. Mr. Burke, you need to employ a better fact-checker for firearm-related stuff. In this you’re not alone, the majority of writers are not gun guys. A notable exception would be Stephen Hunter.

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