James Lee Burke at Tangled Web UK

Page Updated: 04/02/2008

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James Lee Burke - Page 3

Purple Cane Road

Dave Robicheaux Omnibus

Heartwood

Sunset Limited

Cimarron Rose

Paperback - Orion (2001)

First British Edition Orion (2000)

Purple Cane Road
See Review by Phyllis Davis
Detective Dave Robicheaux embarks on a painful journey to a murky past when he is told that his mother Mae was a hooker and ended her life drowned in a mud puddle by two cops working for the Mob.
It is a journey which begins when Mae boarded the Sunset Limited train to Hollywood and ends tragically one stormy night on the edge of the bayou on Purple Cane Road. Along the way Robicheaux and his partner Clete Purcell hook up with state governor Belmont Pugh, a six-foot preacher who has made it all the way from door-to-door salesman to the carnival world of state politics; Johnny Remeta, a psychotic hit-man with an IQ of 160 and an unnerving ability to walk through doors; and Jim Gable whose mansion stands at the head of Purple Cane Road and whose intimate knowledge of Dave's wife Bootsie is yet another cross Robicheaux must bear as, slowly and inexorably, he tracks down his mother's killers and brings them to justice.
In Purple Cane Road, as in Burke's previous novels, the author's extraordinary skill at creating unforgettable characters, his depiction of the squalid underbelly of American society, his evocation of a fallen world in which the gap between black and white, the haves and have-nets grows wider, is ever present. Yet in this book in particular the possibility of redemption seems nearer as Robicheaux confronts and learns to accept his mistakes. With its power deriving from its single focus on a personal past, Purple Cane Road is vintage James Lee Burke, and then some.
'Purple Cane Road is a beautifully written, psychologically complex, stunning atmospheric page-turner. James Lee Burke is the Faulkner of crime fiction' Jonathan Kellerman
‘It is difficult to think of new superlatives to describe Purple Cane Road: like all James Lee Burke’s novels, it has an intricate but superbly machined plot, brilliantly imagined characters (with brilliantly imagined names), and is written in a language which, at once sharp yet poetic, can handle with nonchalant skill anything from extreme violence to languorous ease . . . It makes most other crime writing seem crude, simplistic and immature; and most novels anaemic, etiolated and jejune’ T.J. Binyon, London Evening Standard
'Potent, lyrical, inimitable' Literary Review
'No crime writer in America can hold a pen to Burke's mastery of style and powers of evocation and empathy' Guardian
'When James Lee Burke writes, the little birdies sing, the sun comes out and old men learn to dance again. That's how good he is. And now he's back' Independent on Sunday

Paperback - Orion (2000)

Dave Robicheaux Omnibus
America's finest crime writer and winner of the 1998 CWA/The Macallan Gold Dagger for fiction for Sunset Limited selects his three favourite Dave Robicheaux novels:
In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead
When a movie crew arrives in New Iberia to shoot a Civil War epic, Robicheaux finds that it's not just the inhabitants that are being disturbed. A sadistic killer is targeting young prostitutes. As Robicheaux hunts the assassin, evidence of a past murder is brought to light ? a crime Robicheaux himself witnessed almost forty years ago.
‘An hypnotic thriller… everything that a good mystery is supposed to be’ Washington Post
Cadillac Jukebox
The call from ex?Klansman Aaron Crown ? sentenced to forty years for the decades?old shooting of a civil rights activist ? couldn't have been more unexpected. Election candidate Buford LaRose tries to bribe Robicheaux to Ignore Aaron’s calls. Worse still, Buford’s wife Karyn seems unhealthily keen to get close to Robicheaux – just like old times… The LaRoses, each for their own reasons, want Crown’s case buried.
‘The best of American writing, never mind just American crime writing’ The Times
Sunset Limited
Jack Flynn died on a Klan cross years ago, but Robicheaux has never forgotten it. Nor have Flynn’s two children. When they get mixed up with the case of hustler Cool Breeze Broussard, Robicheaux wonders why? Something ties Breeze to the Flynns and all three of them to local plantation magnate Archer Terrebonne. Something long past is poisoning all their lives.
‘Anyone not familiar with the novels of James Lee Burke should go out and buy them this minute’ Independent
'Every new Robicheaux novel makes me want to start reading the whole series all over again' Time Out

Paperback - Orion (2000)

First British Edition Orion (1999)

Heartwood

'Heartwood,' Billy Bob's father once told him, 'are trees that grow from the heart out, in layers like the spirit does. The core grows stronger and stronger. You just got to keep the roots in a clear stream and let nobody taint the water for you.'

Deaf Smith, Texas, a small town with problems ... Lawyer Billy Bob Holland's friend and neighbour, luckless ex-rodeo rider Wilbur Pickett, has been framed for the theft of $300,000 worth of bearer bonds stolen from Earl Deitrich. Deitrich is the local boy made good, rich but dirty, and doesn't care who he hurts on his way to the top. When Wilbur's wife kills a man in self-defence, she too finds herself threatened with the local lock-up - and worse besides, thanks to a deputy who wouldn't think twice about sexually harassing a blind woman.
It's up to Billy Bob to tie down Deitrich and his henchmen - including the local sheriff, who cannot afford to be impartial, not if he wants to keep his job. Keeping his job is the least of it - the bodies are beginning to pile up and Billy Bob is deep in a quagmire of lies and deceit with black gold at its heart.
'The crime book of the year is unquestionably James Lee Burke's Heartwood. This is an extraordinarily powerful story, full of vivid characters, some normal, more grotesque, set against a landscape which is poetically and movingly evoked: them is no better crime writing coming out of America' Evening Standard
'Burke is a prodigiously accomplished writer, and Heartwood displays to the full his gifts for evoking place, creating a Faulknerian succession of bizarre characters, and producing sudden figurative starbursts exemplified by its exhilaratingly mythical final paragraphs. An irresistible combination of western feuding and southern lyricism, it makes most other American crime fiction look drab and unambitious' Sunday Times
'The best crime fiction ends up transcending and sometimes transforming its genre. Heartwood comes very close to doing that. As always, Burke writes beautifully, playing on the reader's responses with the skill of the virtuoso he is. Don't miss this one' Crime Time
'In Cimarron Rose, James Lee Burke introduced a new character, Texts attorney Billy Bob Holland. His second appearance in Heartwood is carved from the same sturdy fictional wood, and once again pits starkly etched characters against ghosts from the past, their own fallibility and deep layers of guilt and crime - all against a verdant landscape of rolling hills and rivers which no other writer portrays with such evocative realism. Burke is the poet of the tortured South and never fails to connect at all levels' Time Out

First British Edition Orion (1998)

Sunset Limited
America's finest crime writer returns to Louisiana with his great creation, Detective Dave Robicheaux. When Dave Robicheaux discovers that Megan Flynn and her brother Cisco are back in town, his well-honed instinct for trouble is aroused. Drawn as ever to those whom he feels need protection, he remembers how their father had been murdered by the Klan. Then two boys are brutally killed after allegedly raping a black girl; Harpo Scraggs - a dubious government informant - appears on the scene, and Robicheaux is gripped by a deep and irreversible need to resolve the past.
'Among present crime writers no one handles complex plots better than Burke; no one is better at creating characters, good, bad or evil; and above all no one writes with such a sensuous appreciation of life, with so poetic yet meticulous observation of detail' London Evening Standard
'Anyone not familiar with the novels of James Lee Burke Should go out and buy one this minute ... Together, his books amount to the most impressive body of crime fiction in America today. Indeed, many have gone further and argued that Burke's work is too good to be categorised - that he writes great fiction, period' Independent

First British Edition Orion (1997)

Cimarron Rose
See Review by Andrew Taylor - author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series
See Review by Val McDermid - Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill
A brilliant departure for America's finest crime writer and creator of the Dave Robicheaux mysteries, set in a small Texas town riven by corruption and deceit.
Texan lawyer Billy Bob Holland is forced to confront the legacies of crimes old and new when he takes up the defence of local boy Lucas Smothers, a timid teenager accused of the rape and murder of a young girl. As the case unfolds, Billy Bob becomes convinced of the boy's innocence. Increasingly entangled in a web of lies, Billy Bob has three major worries: a corrupt sheriff's office, an undercover DEA operation in the town, and a psychotic convict with a grudge called Garland T. Moon. Loyal to his friends but clumsy in love, trying to do the right thing and haunted by his own mistakes, obsessed with a dream of the old West and struggling to live in the new, Billy Bob Holland is James Lee Burke's strongest character yet.
'I cannot understand why James Lee Burke has not attracted the British readership his excellence deserves. He is as good as Elmore Leonard and Charles Willeford at their best, which is the highest praise I can think of. 'His cop, Dave Robicheaux, Vietnam veteran, former alcoholic, a dignified, tormented outsider with a scarred past and anguish in his dreams, is the deepest, most fully developed character in American crime fiction. 'The dialogue crackles with vitality and realism. The plots are complex yet controlled; tension builds not with shock-bang crudity but in little subtle steps, hardly noticeable until a pulverising, shocking act takes place... 'the best of American writing, never mind just American crime writing.' Marcel Berlins, The Times
'Among the best American writers working today' Daily Telegraph
'He writes explosively about crime and elegiacally about America. And he does so with style and passion enough to turn admirers into addicts. Burke is the only author guaranteed to make me bolt meals and lose sleep. No one else in the business is creating fiction like this' Literary Review
'Explosive action, raw emotions, the whole turbulent farrago nobody evokes despair and longing as well as Burke. Not to be missed' Time Out