Customer Reviews

Swan Peak: A Dave Robicheaux Novel (Dave Robicheaux Mysteries)

5 star:		(55)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Swan Peak by James Lee Burke is the 16th book in his Dave Robicheaux series, and this novel is dark, evil and wonderfully written.

Detective Dave Robicheaux hails from New Iberia, Louisiana. He's spending the summer in Montana with his wife Molly, and best friend Clete Purcell. Robicheaux plans on spending his days fishing and enjoying the Bitterroots. Events conspire against him, and as usual with Dave and Clete, trouble seems to follow them where ever they go.
Two college co-eds are brutally murdered, and one is found near where Robicheaux is staying. Two tourists are also found murdered at a rest stop. Robicheaux feels that the Wellstone brothers, Ridley and Leslie are somehow behind the evil things happening in this small town of Missoula. The Wellstones made their money in Texas, and are now operating a local ministry. Leslie Wellstone, a monster of a man with burn scars all over his face, is married to the pretty country singer, Jamie Sue Stapleton. At the same time, Jamie Sue's true love, Jimmy Dale Greenwood, escapes from a Texas jail after being brutalized by a jail gunbull, Troyce Nix. Nix knows that Greenwod will try to find Jamie Sue and follows Greenwood to Montana. And as if this isn't enough darkness going on, Purcell and Robicheaux are both dealing with demons caused by their childhoods, their Viet Nam experiences and in Robicheaux's case, his battle to stay sober. How these people all converge in this small town and the end results are as surprising as they are masterful.

In terms of writing, James Lee Burke it not just a mystery writer, but an author who writes mysteries. His books are written in a style that can be found in good literature. In fact, in addition to two different mystery series, Burke is the author of eight novels. When Clete became frustrated with the happenings in Missoula, "He closed his cell phone and flipped it over his shoulder onto the bed. If ever reincarnated, he vowed, he would live in a stone hut on top of a mountain in Tibet, thousands of miles away from people whose lives were modeled on the lyrics of country-and-western songs."

James Lee Burke has been publishing a new Robicheaux every July, and it's one of the things I most look forward to during the summer.

I've been a fan of Burke and Robicheaux from the jump, and part of the the draw is the stylistic approach Burke uses to flesh out his characters and settings.

In this novel, the setting is changed to Montana, where Robicheaux and his wife, accompanied by long-time buddy Clete Purcell, find themselves once again embroiled in murder, mayhem, and twisted familial psychopathy, this time revolving around the Wellstone family, a duo of physically and emotionally crippled brothers who are power brokers in the small area around Swan Peak; as well as the wife of one of the brothers, who brings her own checkered past into the equation.

There are other players in the story, leading to a complex brew: the former prison guard with a background of sexual perversity pursuing the escapee who shanked him and left him for dead; the aimlessly wandering woman who captures his heart; various thugs who work for the Wellstones; a religious charlatan; innocent kids trying to follow their faith who end up as victims.

These characters are all on courses that lead to intersection in the rugged Montana scenery, and Burke plots it very well.

Unfortunately, this time around the story bogs down in the endless and repetitive musings about each of the characters' pasts, as well as Robicheaux's history and demons.

In previous books, we've always had this aspect to the stories, and it's been handled deftly and creatively, adding to the depth of the characterizations and atmospheres of the tales. This time, I think Burke's gone overboard, and it really needlessly slows things down. Some of the charcters have overlapping or similar backgrounds, so the musings in these cases become repetitive. Others deal with similar demons -- most obviously Clete and Robicheaux -- so again there's a great deal of repetition.

There's one other aspect that's starting to become very obvious and problematic for the Robicheaux character: his age. In his musings, we read about his background in the Vietnam War, and times he spent with his Dad "in the 1940s" when he was growing up.

Well... I spent those kinds of times with MY Dad in the 1950s, and am also a Vietnam veteran, and my next birthday is my 60th. Which means Robicheaux has to be nearing 70. It's getting pretty hard to believe a character that old can be carrying on the way Robicheax and Purcell do.

Anyway, it was still an enjoyable read, if not quite up to Burke's earlier works, so I give it 3.5 stars.

Swan Peak is a "pseudo-sequel" to Black Cherry Blues, the Edgar Award-winning third Dave Robicheaux novel. Like that previous book, it takes place in Montana, where Robicheaux, his wife Molly and longtime friend Clete Purcel go for a fishing trip partly meant to help them escape the devastation of Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina (which was powerfully and sadly evoked in The Tin Roof Blowdown.) The fishing party are the guests of Albert Hollister, one of wealthy oil man Ridley Wellstone's many enemies, with whom Dave and Clete must soon contend after inadvertantly trespassing on his property. After being warned away by two thugs Clete is recognized by one of the men - a former associate of Mob Boss Sally Dio - as the man who engineered Dio's demise in a Montana plane crash (see Black Cherry Blues.) Things get more complicated when two college students are found murdered near Hollister's land; the emnity between Hollister and Wellstone makes the oil tycoon a possible suspect and Dave is recruited by the local authorities to help with the investigation. Meanwhile Clete becomes dangerously infatuated with Wellstone's sister-in-law, a beautiful country singer who's being stalked by a former lover who is himself on the run; he escaped from a Texas prison after nearly killing a brutally violent guard named Troyce Nix. When Nix comes to Montana in pursuit, Robicheaux first sees him at a revival meeting put on by the shady Rev. Sonny Click (who may have Wellstone connections) and immediately pegs him as a menace despite being unaware of the ex-military man's disgraceful involvement at Abu Graib. All of this might sound confusing here, but Burke combines his intertwining storylines so smoothly that it's easy to appreciate his masterfully graceful prose, as well as his poetic eye for detail in both landscape and character. Nobody writes crime novels like James Lee Burke, and Swan Peak shows he is at the peak of his considerable powers.
Also recommended: A Stranger Lies There - winner of the Malice Domestic Award for best first mystery, it features a vividly rendered desert backdrop that should please fans of James Lee Burke's colorful Montana and Louisiana settings.

(3.5 stars) Following the decimation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, described in James Lee Burke's last novel, The Tin Roof Blowdown (Dave Robicheaux Mysteries), long-time New Iberia Parish detective Dave Robicheaux has accepted an invitation to recover emotionally on a ranch in western Montana. Robicheaux's long-time buddy Clete Purcell, who accompanies him, has not even started to recover. For Purcell, "the booze he drank and the weed he smoked and the pills he dropped didn't work anymore," and Robicheaux is desperately afraid for his friend.

Within days of their arrival in Montana, the past catches up with them. Clete Purcell runs afoul of two thugs, one of whom once worked for a Nevada gangster who was killed with his entourage when their small plane crashed in the mountains. Purcell has long been suspected of having been involved in the crash. These two thugs now work for wealthy Ridley Wellstone, who is financing a charismatic ministry operated by his young wife. Running parallel to these two plot threads is the story of Jimmy Dale Greenwood, a young man horribly abused by a "gunbull" during a two-year prison sentence. His abuser is now in the same area of Montana, near Missoula and Flathead Lake, as Jimmy Dale. In yet additional plot lines, two young college students are found tortured and murdered in the hills behind the ranch where Robicheaux and Purcell are staying, and a Hollywood producer making a film nearby, and his companion, are shot and burned at a highway rest stop. As these disparate plot threads begin to overlap and explode in violence, Robicheaux and Purcel are up to their eyeballs in the action.

Author James Lee Burke's vaunted ability to create vibrant characters and convey atmosphere through stunning descriptions is on full display here in Big Sky Country, with its fiercely independent residents and its spectacular natural resources. Despite the setting, however, the novel is extremely dark, filled with tormented, if not tortured, characters, all of whom are at the mercy of forces they cannot control. Extreme coincidence guides much of the action here, and though there are a few hints that one or two characters may, in time, set their lives in order, most "want their enemies hosed down with a flamethrower." Long biographies of the many individual characters provide their unfortunate backgrounds and suggest reasons for their violent behavior, though they do not explain the rare glimpses of empathy we see in some characters.

A climactic scene of non-stop action, killing, and near death experiences attempts to show the ultimate connections among the characters and the plot lines, but the author never explains how some of the characters actually extricate themselves from the critical scene. Even Dave Robicheaux, the narrator, admits, "In truth, I cannot tell you with any exactitude what happened [that night]." Somehow, after following so many damaged characters and complex plot lines for four hundred pages, I expected a little more. n Mary Whipple

Pegasus Descending: A Dave Robicheaux Novel (Dave Robicheaux)
Heaven's Prisoners
The Neon Rain: A Dave Robicheaux Novel
A Morning for Flamingos

I'm a fan of James Lee Burke and the Dave Robicheaux novels (I especially like the character of Clete Purcell). Unlike a lot of other popular series, the Robbicheax novels haven't faltered much over time, in fact, some of the strongest entries in the series have been the most recent. That is, until now. It isn't that Swan Peak is a bad novel; it's just that, in a strange way, it feels as if Burke has taken some of the qualities that make his novels stand out and overdone them.

His novels have always been dark and complex and his characters tortured and flawed. I've always liked that about his novels, but where previous novels have been elevated by these dark musings, Swan Peak gets bogged down by it. In moderation, the haunted ramblings of a tortured soul, adds depth and atmosphere to a novel. But overdone, the novel loses momentum and becomes derivative.

I also found that this novel, like so many of the Robicheaux novels, has Dave going toe to toe against a wealthy, powerful family that is rotten to the core. The murders in the novel feel oddly disconnected from the rest of the storyline and the resolution to these murders is strangely unsatisfying.

But still, a weaker Burke novel is better than most. I always enjoy Burke's prose although it is admittedly overwrought at times. Burke weaves various plot lines together effectively and while the novel is ripe with gothic melodrama, it's compellingly rich and complex. The dialogue is as sharp as ever. Few authors convey street language like Burke does (perhaps only Elmore Leonard is better). And then there's Clete, one of the most entertaining fictional characters ever put to paper.

All things considered, this is not James Lee Burke's best, but it's still a solid read. 3 ½ stars.

James Lee Burke dwells in that rarified stratosphere with writers whose fans so anticipate the arrival of a new novel that they snap it up, sight unseen, the moment it hits the market. His writing is like a straight shot of single malt Scotch, or dark chocolate laced with Grand Marnier --- an acquired taste, fueling the imagination with a jolt to the system. Each new event in the life of Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux is a journey with a hero who has battled more dragons than St. George. Dave's legendary triumphs over the mafia, the degenerates and the saints of the mean streets of New Orleans, and the cops who are made up from both sides, are laid against his internal battles with alcoholism and personal loss. His lifelong best friend and former NOPD partner, Clete Purcell, battles his own inner demons with a heart that is even bigger than his hulking form.

Dave and Clete have survived the hell that was Katrina, so richly portrayed in Burke's last stunning novel, THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN. Along with Dave's ex-nun wife, Molly, they seek escape from the ravaged Louisiana coast to a friend's mountain ranch retreat in Montana. As they look forward to casting their lines in the trout streams on a relaxing getaway, their idyllic escape is shattered when two college kids are found brutally murdered on their host's ranch.

Dave reluctantly accepts a deputy's badge to aid local police in interviewing witnesses. When two tourists are savagely killed in a manner bearing similarities to the college students' deaths, the two veteran detectives see a pattern that the rural sheriff's department overlooks.

Dave and Clete, both veterans of Vietnam, harbor ghosts that are never laid to rest. Their reputation for violent and sometimes lurid events as New Orleans cops follows them no matter how far they roam, but they don't expect to find their vacation haunted by the ghost of an incident that occurred over 20 years earlier. As Clete drinks and brawls his way ever further on his self-destructive journey to hell and beyond, he manages to lumber into the midst of an FBI investigation. Sally Dio, a vicious New Orleans mob boss who was believed killed in a 1989 plane crash in Montana, remains the subject of a reopened FBI investigation. Clete was an early suspect in that long-ago plane crash, and his arrival on the scene two decades later is viewed with suspicion by the Feds.

SWAN LAKE, with its wild and woolly cast of country western singers, holy-roller evangelists and con men, grabs you aboard a whirlwind ride to a surprising plot twist at the end that will keep you turning pages into the wee hours.

Only James Lee Burke can weave a complex plot with so many disparate time frames and characters into a cohesive and brilliantly written novel. Our two heroes, both pushing their luck conducting police work at an age when most cops are either retired or dead, can still hold their own against bad guys of such monumental evil. Burke portrays raw human nature against the backdrop of a world gone slightly mad. To know Dave Robicheaux and the vivid characters who live in his world is to admire his strengths and weaknesses in equal measure. His fans are happy that the old boy still has the chops to keep up the good fight.

--- Reviewed by Roz Shea

Don't do it Jimmy Dale, don't do it...

I won't review the story because you can read about it above, and I really don't want to know what happens in a book before I read it, but I do like reading the reader's thoughts on the book.

This was a magnificent listen (audio download). God bless James Lee Burke and Will Patton. I was a little hesitant when I read Dave was going off to Montana, wondering how Burke could pull it off, but the same beauty of language, the same craft in his writing, and the same wonderful plotting held up to even the best of the Louisiana novels. I listened to it straight through, except for a little sleep, and found my self pacing back and forth several times and rewinding many times just to listen again to Patton's gorgeous rendition of Burke's beautiful words. I rarely talk outloud to characters in a book, but I was constantly giving advice to Jimmy Dale and Nix. There was an interesting juxtaposition in this book that I haven't seen in other Burke books, the seemingly evil and despicable Nix winds up a someone you feel like rooting for...odd for Burke.

As an aside, some of the vulgarisms Clete comes up with just stun me (and I raised three teenage boys). It's Burke's knack for description in a different version. Also, lots of political swipes here that I wish would've been left out...it so jars the pace of the story, whether you agree with them or not. King, Parker, and now Burke can't seem to leave well enough alone.

Burke is a national treasure. His previous books will stand as testament to what New Orleans was pre-Katrina and I hope soon that he will re-visit New Orleans with the same love and deep lushness of description that we've come to expect. Tin Roof Blowdown was so stark and apocalyptic.

Since Mr. Burke is getting on in years, I treasure each book with such love. I wait for July as if it were Christmas.

And as for Will Patton, he should receive every single reader award that can be bestowed on him.

Geez, what a great book this was...

There are enough plot summaries here, so my attention turns to the meaning of Burke's offerings.

'Then one of those strange and unexpected moments occurred, the kind that makes you feel every human being carries a secret well of sorrow whose existence he or she daily denies in order to remain functional.' (p. 156)

At its heart, Burke's writing shows us that the meaning of life is how each of us deals with pain; and how for so many our pain is concealed by all manner and degrees of destructive behavior against self and others. The juxtaposition of how his achingly beautiful prose embroiders this wrenchingly ugly truth takes my breath away.

His violence is not gratuitous, but always connected to a story of the agony which spawns it. Most of us probably don't manage our pain in such extreme ways. But if his journey into the darkness of the human soul helps us see how our own layers of the personality onion protect our tender core, it will be for the better of all.

My wife and I have been reading James Lee Burke since he started being published. His descriptions of his surroundings, and his prose in general have become increasingly impressive and delightful, suggesting he may be studying the Masters. Indeed, in this book, if prose can be rated on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the best, this book should be rated a 10! Further, I suggest that readers beware: if you have other pressing "gotta-do's" on your agenda, don't start this book because you likely will not put it down until you have read the last sentence.
I rated this book a 3.5 vs a 5.0 because, along with being more prosaic, Burke seems to me to be increasingly base, ugly and disgusting in some of his characters who have barely graduated from animals to humans. The details of one man raping another could not bave been more repugnant, and, I believe is a first for Burke. A backhoe operator digging deep graves in which he intends to deposit newly created human corpses is also a first. As Burke has said, in this and previous books, worms and snakes crawl through his mind in all phases of daily living & sleeping --- lonliness, fear, exhilarations and on and on. There are just more pages of this kind of repugnances than I care to read.
In summary, this is a book that is well worth reading keeping in mind these caveats.

Although I am an unapologetic James Lee Burke fan, I was disappointed in Swan Peak. The Montana setting, with its big skies and vistas, diminishes the claustrophobic effects of the South Louisiana locales that serve as major character in most of the other Robicheaux/Purcel tales. Horrible things are happening to little people in a big world instead of big people in a more confined space. Despite Burke's superlative craftsmanship, the disonnance of scale lessens the overall power of the book.

That is not to say Swan Peal in anything less than a worthwhile read. Dave is still haunted, Clete is still a runaway bus in a school crossing and the rest of the cast is finely wrought, but Swan Peak remains a fish out of water. As both the characters and the author age, one can only hope for a homecoming.