Crusader's Cross by
James Lee Burke
hbk out August 05
Published by Orion
at £12.99
In summer 1958, Dave Robicheaux and his half-brother Jimmie have just finished high school and are working laying rubber cables in the swamps along the Louisiana-Texas coastline. Jimmie falls in love with young Ida Durbin but she is a prostitute, and pimp Lou Kale will never set her free. Jimmie and Ida plan to elope but Ida never shows up and no one knows what has happened to her. Decades later, reformed alcoholic and ex-cop Robicheaux is called to the deathbed of rich, well-connected, bigot Troy Bordelon who has a confession to make. Troy believes his uncle had something to do with the kidnap and killing of Ida Durbin; he recalls seeing a bloodstained chair at the house where she was held and beaten. Robicheaux begins to delve into the past while in the present a serial killer is at work in Baton Rouge; murdering women and flaunting his work to the police. Another excellent offering from master storyteller, James Lee Burke who writes about poverty and oppression with clarity and righteous anger. As always his prose is sensuous and lyrical, his vision mythic and the characterisation and sense of place as good as you get anywhere.
(
Cath Staincliffe
author of the popular Sal Kilkenny mysteries and the series creator of TV Blue Murder)
Crusader's Cross by
James Lee Burke
