Customer Reviews

Crusader's Cross

5 star:		(76)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Steady, consistent, lyrical, reliable, soothing, wonderful, a distinct voice.......all ways to describe James Lee Burke's writing. For myself, while it may be an odd thought, I have always had moments when reading his prose when I felt like I was actually reading poetry, his writing is that beautiful. You just can't go wrong with James Lee Burke and his protagonist Dave Robicheaux. I highly recommend this book, and anything else he has ever written, he is simply that good. Crusader's Cross, set in the bayou country of Louisiana and the surrounding environs, relates a tale of the long-lost puppy love of Dave's brother and their search for what happened to her, weaves in a new story line revolving about a tough, remarkable nun, and features both an odd family who claim descent from Roman heroes who defeated Attila the Hun at Chalons and a depraved, sadistic serial killer who seems to be taunting Robicheaux. These separate threads are intricately woven together against the historical and ongoing backdrop of the prostitution trade in the South.

In his richly drawn and finely realized protagonist, Burke has created a true hero: a complex man, with deep roots and deeper loves, heartsick for the lost way of life of his idealized youth in the Acadian bayou country. Dave Robicheaux, son of an Cajun oil rig worker, child of the golden fifties, Vietnam veteran, police detective, alcoholic, husband, father, friend, a man of violence and conscience, wondering where the beauty in his world has gone. This novel may be one of his best yet, and I was glad to see his half-brother show up again. Run, don't walk, to go get your copy of this book and prepare for wonderful experience - this is a rare one. Shut out your friends and family, grab some goodies to eat, lock the door, throw the bolt and settle in for one heck of a good read. Crusader's Cross is another wonderful installment in the Robicheaux series.

Crusader's Cross by James Lee Burke is yet another view into the seedy world of New Orleans and its environs. Burke is a master at writing gritty tales that capture the flavor and spirit of the world he depicts. I know of no other author today that is as good a descriptive writer than Burke. When Burke describes a summer thunderstorm you can smell the dampness rising off the pavement. Pure magic. Burke has included Dave's good friend and PI buddy Clete Purcell (Semper Fi), so the gangs all here.

In Crusader's Cross Dave Robicheaux is alone, and unemployed. His wife is dead, his adopted daughter away at college. Robicheaux is about as low as you can get. A death bed confession takes Robicheaux back to the late 50's when he and his brother were very innocent. As Robicheaux presses into the disappearance of a young prostitute nearly 50 years ago he is "encouraged" to let it go. Factor into this story the Chalon family (brother and sister) and you have the makings of a real south Louisianna clam bake.

Crusader's Cross is rich with atmosphere. The story is full bodied and the characters memorable. This is a terrific summer read.

After reading the first thirteen Dave Robicheaux mysteries by James Lee Burke at Breakneck speed, I finally came to the end of this series with Crusader's Cross. Actually, since Crusader's Cross was recently published, I'm hoping that Burke still has a number of Robicheaux novels left to write.

Crusader's Cross opens up with Dave Robicheaux no longer working for the Iberia Sheriff's Department. But his sabbatical doesn't last very long. First, a former schoolmate makes a deathbed confession to Robicheaux. He's afraid that he may have contributed to the death of a prostitute, Ida Durkin. Ida saved Jimmie Robicheaux's (Dave's half-brother) life back in 1958 and Jimmie had a crush on her when she mysteriously vanished. Also, a serial killer is brutally murdering women in the New Orleans/Iberia Parish area. Dave's former partner, Helen Soileau is now sheriff and she reluctantly allows Dave back on the force.

As with all Robicheaux novels, events are set in motion when Dave starts poking around. The usual things start happening: his life is threatened, friend Clete Purcel gets involved doing wild things, hit men start appearing, etc. Robicheaux always seems at war with the upper class, and in Crusader's Cross, he feels that secrets being hidden by the Chalon family hold the key to the disappearance of Ida Durbin. And if there aren't enough plot complications, Dave falls in love with a nun.

Many aspects of the plot have similarities to previous books, but we excuse Burke because his writing is so terrific. He is especially astute when it comes to describing Louisiana. "The state's culture, mind-set, religious attitudes, and economics are no different from those of a Caribbean nation. The person who believes he can rise to a position of wealth and power in the state of Louisiana and not do business with the devil probably knows nothing about the devil and even less about Louisiana." Burke describes alcoholism as "not a disease here but a venerated family heirloom." Burke's characters are always interesting and I'm beginning to enjoy Helen Soileau as much as I like Cletus Purcel. But I will admit that with Robicheaux's anger management issues, it is a stretch that he would remain a cop. Maybe it's a Louisiana thing.

Seeing a book review for Crusader's Cross this summer is what introduced me to James Lee Burke. Now that I've gone through all the Robicheaux novels, I'll have to start on his Billy Bob Holland series.

When Hurricane Katrina ripped Louisiana apart, many of us here in bookland were worried for Dave Robicheaux, the enigmatic private eye who makes the area his home. Not that he'd be wiped out, but more than his already fragile lifestyle would collapse. Robicheaux is the standard set of artistic contradictions, a strong man with a deep inner need to be loved, and an extremely literal person who also has a strongly mystical-religious streak. It is reverence for the dead, and fear of what they tell, that propels the atmosphere of this often violent story which can leave an atmosphere of desolation clinging like illicit cigarette smoke in teenage automobiles. Is there greater meaning to it? Not really, except that when you get past all the clever subterfuge and false leads and wrecking ball emotional detours, you can see that underneath all the violence and abandon Dave Robicheaux and by extension, his creator-author, are broadcasting a strong belief in life. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes surly private eye mysteries in the Chandler style.

I was hooked on Burke's Dave Robicheaux series early on, enjoying his antics and dramas over the years. Now in the third decade of the intrepid detective's adventures, Burke writes from long experience, deep pockets of memory that have infused his characters with their own particular authenticity. The latest Robicheaux novel harkens back to Dave's youth with his look-alike half-brother, Jimmie the Gent, the two working the Louisiana-Texas coastline. It is there that Dave and Jimmie meet the insouciant Ida Durbin, in the sweltering summer of 1958. Their friendship is short, but significant, as Ida saves the brothers, stranded on a sandbar, from the closer-circling fin of a shark.

Jimmie falls for the slightly-older, but charming Ida, who is evasive about her job and where she lives. As it turns out, Ida is a lady of the evening who works in a house on the notorious Post Office Street in Galveston. Jimmie plans to buy Ida out of her bondage and live in Mexico, her shady career relegated to the past, but Ida disappears without a trace before their scheduled meeting. Dave never forgets about the quirky woman, her memory easily resurfacing as a sin of omission "like the rusty head of a hatchet buried in the heartwood of a tree- it eventually finds the teeth of a whining saw blade".

Forty years later, news of Ida's fate appears from an obscure source. By the time his conscience bids a reckoning, Dave has retired from the Sheriff's Department in New Iberia Parish. As a recovering alcoholic, the past is not an ideal place for Dave to focus his thoughts, his history littered with violence, mayhem and two dead wives; but once the hook is in, his instincts take over. His own past rife with dead bodies, criminal acts and vigilantism, Dave's old friend Clete Purcell, formerly of the New Orleans Police Department, has opened his won P.I. firm. Robicheaux decides to pay his pal a visit, Ida Durbin heavy on his mind. Clete applies himself to what he does best, digging up connections most people want left alone. Out of nowhere, Dave is the subject of intense interest and the object of violence, only aggravating his curiosity and determination. Given the circumstances, Robicheaux temporarily takes his shield back from the New Iberia P.D.

With Clete Purcell in tow, Dave mixes it up from New Iberia to New Orleans, dealing with such colorful characters as the Chalons family (organized crime), Nig Rosewater and Wee Willie Bimstine (bail bondsmen), Bad Texas Bob Cobb (a cop on the pad) and Jigger Babineau (mob muscle). To add to the confusion, Dave gets romantically and emotionally attached to Molly Boyle, a nun who never took her vows and is not adverse to Mr. Robicheaux's charms, even when her work and reputation are imperiled. True to form, Dave and Clete push against anything and everyone in the way their investigation.

Behind the sudden resurfacing of Ida's past and a recent series of related murders of women in Baton Rouge, Robicheaux's world is filled with gangsters, long-buried insidious secrets and the recurring chaos that follows him everywhere, as all the demons he walked away from return for one more pitched battle. Silk-suited, passing-for-genteel thugs, murderers and disappeared prostitutes are all part of the Robicheaux lexicon, the dark heart of these mysteries buried in a south that seethes with conflicted loyalties and the tentacles of organized crime, set in a landscape of breathtaking beauty, magnolia blossoms and gothic architecture. The evil creeps out at night and even the weary Robicheaux can't ignore the call to justice for the powerless and unrequited. Is this one of Burke's best, informed by a rich past, or another exercise in the same well-worn vein, the intrepid Robicheaux reaching the end of his tether? Not as long as there are loyal readers who appreciate a little seasoning on their heroes. Luan Gaines/2005.

OK, most Robicheaux fans will love this book. So did I. BUT, we have all seen this before: Dave takes on an evil aristocratic Louisiana family, he falls from grace, pulls himself up, and the family is ultimately destroyed. In the meantime he gets married a fourth time and survives on the banks of the Teche. The trouble is that James Lee Burke is now a victim of placing his characters in real space and time. This novel, as the author makes claer, takes place in the late summer of 2004. Dave, in turn, remembers playing in a New Iberia park during World War II, the event that precipitates this adventure takes place in 1958 when he and his brother were going to college, prior to his service in Vietnam, yada, yada. By my count, Dave would be around 65 in 2004, old enough for Social Security and Medicare, and perhaps too old for being beaten into a pulp or having a honeymoon like a man one third his age. (Maybe its in the water.) I suppose that as long as the Rolling Stones are out on tour, Dave and Clete can beat up southern Louisiana. But, I am a Vietnam era veteran who is saying the next Robicheaux better be a prequil. My college students (born in the late 1980's) have never heard of Charlie Watts or Keith Richards.

I love the Dave Robicheaux series, and have been re-reading them since Katrina hit. I was eager to get this one and read it.

Burke's writing is, as always, top-knotch, and his characters are some of the most finely drawn in fiction. I love how he imbues even minor characters like the New Orleans button-man, or a hospital nurse, the coroner, or a routine witness with unique human personalities and traits that makes them come alive on the page. Burke's descriptive writing is breathtaking, and makes the place come alive with all five senses.

That said, I found this installment a little disappointing, and a little frustrating. The plot was a little convoluted, and the loose ends didn't really get tied up very well. Dave, who usually gets in serious trouble at least once in every novel, got into so many ethical and criminal compromises in this one it made my head spin. He's hired, fired, suspended, jailed, hired, suspended, accused, fired, jailed, suspended, hired....!! I couldn't keep track!

While Dave's susceptibility to alcoholism has been a risk in all the novels, I found myself surprised that he went off the rails so easily here, and surprised at how he seems to have reverted to the same self-destructive behavior exhibited in the very early novels; his character had matured over time, and this fall from grace seemed a little too easy. While it's true that Dave's life has changed radically, do we have to live through this character's downfall in the face of those and other tragedies, without Burke having let us in on why and how he lost Bootsie and the house. C'mon, Burke, can you at least tell us what happened?

Perhaps, as a long-time fan, I am simply experiencing the frustration with Dave that his fictional friends experience in this book!!!

As another reviewer mentioned, I found that the character of Molly, who started out richly drawn, became flat and vague as the story went on. She knows the man who tries to kill her -- can we at least see how it got to this point, and what it means to her, instead of turning her into the typical "Woman in need of rescue" figure?

The serial killings are depicted as so over-the-top horrible --- and Burke has written many similarly horrible killings in previous books --- that I was surprised at the wrap-up of the story. Was the revealed killer the killer of all the victims, or just some? And why? I would like this aspect of the story to have been less sketchy, particularly as the killer is revealed to be somebody who does not fit the usual demographic of serial killers.

I loved seeing the character arc that Helen has taken, and I always love Clete's antics. His side-trip to Florida was a great chapter.

To wrap up, I think CRUSADER'S CROSS is a good book, with all the great elements of Burke's best, but it doesn't quite hit the mark.

When he was a young man, Dave Robicheaux encountered a brave young woman named Ida Durbin. Dave and his brother Jimmie were young and drunk and swam out to a rock only to be surrounded by a couple of sharks while the sun was going down. Ida arrived with a raft to save them and sparked Jimmie's interest. Unfortuately, Ida had a secret life as a prostitute and Jimmie ended up wanting to take her away from that. Instead, on the day that she and Jimmie are to go to Mexico together to escape, Ida never arrives. All indications are that she met with foul play and that has haunted Dave and Jimmie since that time.

However, as with all stories told by James Lee Burke, that is merely the beginning. In the present, still grieving for his lost wife Bootsie and suffering empty-nest syndrom with Alafair away at college, Dave is confroted with a chance to find out what truly happened to Ida Durbin all those years ago. In Burke's Louisiana, everyone has secrets and they all spill out in a loose jumble. Dave's puzzle is to put them together while maintaining his own precarious hold on his life. His efforts quickly put him into the sights of crooked cops and hitmen, and draw the attention of one of Iberia Parrish's golden sons, Valetine Chalons, who is a television reporter that quickly brings everything he can to bear on destroying Dave's credibility. A serial killer is also loose in the Bayou country. Dave reassumes his job as a deputy sheriff to chase the serial killer, but his true agenda lies in what happened to Ida Durbin all those years ago. The way is tangled, and Dave has snakes of his own to face while chasing a truth no one wants uncovered.

James Lee Burke needs no introduction to his many fans. For the uninitiated, though, CRUSADER'S CROSS is an excellent place to jump on. Dave Robicheaux is a complicated man, one that cannot live in the present because his past constantly remains with him and his chance at a future is always at risk. Burke has written several novels about Robicheaux and lawyer hero Billy Bob Holland as well as stand-alone books.

As always in a Burke book, the prose is lyrical and majestic. The images conjured up in a sentence or two paint entire canvases in the mind. The people in the book are solidly rendered, filled with grace and guilt and good and evil. No one in a Burke novel is truly ever a hero or a villain. Every novel Burke pens centers around revelations, and CRUSADER'S CROSS certainly does that. Robicheaux's complicated relationship with Clete Purcell is at its finest in this book. The pain that Dave carries over the loss of his wife and the absence of his daughter are palpable. But it is the other characters, Valentine and Raphael and Honoria Chalons that glitter and fascinate. Secrets have been buried in the swamps for decades, and now it's time for them to see the light of day.

James Lee Burke has written a truly awesome book in CRUSADER'S CROSS. Although he is chasing a serial killer to a degree, it's his depiction of the South and the history and the people that live there that keep drawing readers back. Fans of Robert B. Parker or Robert Crais or Joe Lansdale who have never read Burke will definitely want to pick this one up.

Dave Robicheaux has turned in his badge and gun, retired from the New Iberia, Louisiana sheriff's department, and is contentedly drawing social security and a pension. He bends the occasional fishing rod in the Bayou Tesche with his fishing buddies, tends to his cat and Tripod, his three-legged raccoon, visits his late wife Bootsie's grave, and attends his AA meetings. The leisure life agrees with him.

A call from the wife of a college classmate rouses him from his early summer reverie. Her husband is dying and he desperately asks to speak with Dave. The dying man recalls an incident surrounding the disappearance of a girl by the name of Ida Durbin. The girl had meant little to Dave, but his half-brother, Jimmie Robicheaux, had fallen in love with her after she saved Dave and Jimmie from a shark attack off of Galveston Island in the late 1950s. Ida was a small-time prostitute, but Jimmie didn't care and wanted to get her out of the life. She vanished the day of their planned elopement over 45 years ago, and Jimmie had never forgotten her.

Dave half-heartedly promises the dying man that he'll look into some new evidence on her disappearance, but he doesn't really think it will go anywhere until he asks a couple of questions of two veteran New Orleans cops. Their reaction is so unexpected and violent that his curiosity is piqued. Dave, as readers know, never met an underdog he didn't want to defend --- especially if the abuse was coming from the rich, powerful or corrupt political families of Louisiana --- so he decides to look further into the disappearance and possible murder of Ida Durbin. The trail of Ida Durbin leads to the prominent Chalon family whose members are deeply involved with drug running, prostitution and, not surprisingly, politics.

The rest is pure James Lee Burke. We're offered the deeply evocative bayou scenes and the complex relationships between unlikely characters, such as Molly Boyle, a Catholic nun with whom Dave falls in love. He teams up with Clete Purcell, his best friend and former partner in the New Orleans police department whose own rap sheet is longer than most of the perps he apprehended, and Helen Soileau, sheriff of New Iberia County who reluctantly puts Dave back on the payroll to lighten the load when the murders start to mount up.

In this 14th Robicheaux novel, old Dave may be a bit long in the tooth, but he can still fight the righteous fight. He doesn't just join the crusade --- he digs the hole, erects the cross, then climbs up on it and nails himself down. Even Sheriff Soileau thinks he's finally stepped over the line, and Dave is not entirely certain that he's innocent of the murder of a Chalon family member.

In one of the richest plots ever, CRUSADER'S CROSS is a welcome return of one of mystery fiction's most indelible characters.

--- Reviewed by Roz Shea

Crusader's Cross is Dave Robicheaux at his best, and he hasn't lost his sharp edge or gritty perspective--but age and life experience seem to have softened his character.

Dave Robicheaux is called to the deathbed of a life-long racist who Dave has known since high school. Troy Bordelon has some information to pass on about the disappearance of Ida Durbin, a black woman who Dave's brother was briefly involved with some 40 years earlier.

This disclosure opens long-closed wounds as Dave sets out to discover the truth about what happened to Ida Durbin. At the same time a one-paragraph addendum to a wire service article about the death of a local woman catches his attention. Over thirty women in the Baton Rouge area had been murdered, all unsolved, in the last ten years.

We are instantly tossed into the fragrant, untamed landscape of New Iberia, its wild, self-propagating greenery, the corrupt self-governing government, a shifting moral economy, past wrongs influencing present choices and behind it all, greed born of desire.

All the characters and ghosts of past Robicheaux novels make an appearance in Crusader's Cross but the author also introduces a sprinkling of new faces, one who has particular significance in Robicheaux's life!

I've never been to Louisiana, but I will be sorely disappointed when I do, if it isn't exactly like a James Lee Burke novel!

Armchair Interviews says: James Lee Burke does it again, and again and again. What a great writer. If you don't know him, pick up this book and start to love his writing.