Reviews

• 40 years have passed since the unpunished murder of Jack Flynn. Dave never forgot it. This murder paved the way for the work ethic that Dave has established since becoming a police officer and investigator. The return to New Iberia of Jack's orphans, Megan and Cisco, will leave a bloody trail in their path. Dave, with the help of his partner Helen and his faithful friend Clete, will have a lot of cases to solve and a puzzle to put together. A great investigation by Burke once again. Dave's strength is his resilience, especially when he firmly believes that justice must come, even decades later. Burke's descriptions of this beautiful corner of New Iberia are warm, colorful and beautiful. Another great read from Burke!

• My least favourite book by the author till date but still a very good story with rich characters.

• Sunset Limited, by James Lee Burke carries on the legacy of extremely satisfying mysteries. It paints a matter-of-fact backdrop of Southern Louisiana and its cultural mores, exotic foods and belief system that have maintained its romantic draw for tourists and residents since before anyone can remember. Burke is a highly skilled and award winning author who takes the reader into the minds of criminals, ex-cons, addicts, assassins, and cops that have managed to evade the law while enforcing it. When you pick up this book, you will take a journey into a remarkable world of colorful characters, in dreamscape places, doing simple yet soul-lifting things like fishing in the rain, watching fish jump next to lily pads, watching a summer storm with its painted skies, thunder, and lightning, and of course, swatting mosquitoes. He takes physical abuse to the limit, love, honor, and loyalty to the ends of reality, and the wiles of personal demons to the nth degree. It is also a very sad book with tortured characters who know no happiness. The author uses what has become a literary tool for him. He takes the deepest and most sacred of trusts and needs of a child, the love and want for a mother, and paints a terrible and soul wrenching word picture of a mother's face disappearing into the horizon on a train. Then there is the ever recurring mental picture of a father dying in an oil rig disaster, and a father's fear as assassins try to make him tell where his boy is hiding. He does this so well, so exacting, so deep and apropos that you are there in the scene, weeping and needing, and wishing. The Dave Robicheaux series is not just a continuing saga. It's a journey through a fascinating world of satisfying adventures where every bullet does not find its mark, every bludgeoning does not kill, every victory is not sweet, and the good guy does not always walk away clean. I have read almost all the series and am still looking forward to the next read as much as any of the others. I know that one day Dave and Clete will age to the point where they just can't do what they do anymore. That will be a sad day and I will miss them terribly. I hope that day is far in the future. I must say that Burke does is homework and research so well that technical, street, specialty, and cultural words just naturally roll off his pen, and when he resorts to vulgarity, euphemisms, sexual explicitness and expletives, they roll naturally into the storyline and never seem forced or used just to satisfy some editor. It might seem to the casual reader that Burke may run out of combative situations between his characters, but he never fails to deliver credible and interesting exchanges both verbal and physical. When Dave or Clete arrive into a scene, it's just a matter of time before someone is offended, arrested, or threatened and then an ensuing explosion occurs that keeps the reader on the edge of his proverbial seat. Another great read by a great author who I am glad that I found.

• Like the way he writes, the way he describes the deep South and his imaginative narratives....I enjoy all the Robicheax books...

• For at least the second time in the Dave Robicheaux series, the story revolves around a body Dave found as a youth, which is two more than the rest of us. Years ago, he found a radical union organizer named Flynn crucified with wooden pegs. Now his daughter Megan, a photojournalist has returned, supposedly to do a story on a black man and minor convict, Cool Breeze Broussard, who cost a jailer, Alex Guidry, his job. Also on the scene is her shady brother Cisco, filming a movie on plantation owners, and tied into Guidry, a character named Harpo Scruggs, and a sociopath named Boxleitner. Somewhere in this morass is the influence of a family named Terrabone, whose daughter Lila is an alcoholic whom Dave has tried to help. As has become usual in Jamie Lee Burke's depictions of the detective for New Iberia Parish, there is much to uncover about the past, as well as the solving of a series of current murders and several lesser crimes. There is the mysterious case of Broussard's wife, who left him and theoretically, committed suicide. Dave's former partner and friend from the New Orleans Police Department, Clete Purcel, gets involved with Megan, an odd combination, given her worldliness and his penchant for violence and his overwhelming personality. Dave, knowing Megan plots every move she has ever made, worries that his friend might get hurt. And here, Robicheaux carries more than his usual baggage. The memories of Vietnam, his own alcoholism, although he is now sober, the memory of his murdered second wife despite being happily married to Bootsie, his pain over his mother and her neglect and lusty sexuality that gave her identity, and especially, a deep guilt over the injustice done to blacks and the poor in the south over the years. There is a lot to absorb in Sunset Limited, helped mightily by the generally great writing which flows easily from page to page. There are very few decent people in the book outside the usual cast, Bootsie, Batist, Dave's daughter Alafair, and his fellow law enforcement professionals. Everyone else it seems has revenge, a scheme or murder on their minds. But unlike the preceding book in the series, Cadillac Jukebox, which I found somewhat implausible and overreaching, Burke pulls this book together well, although the ending does not accomplish real justice. Revenge, much to Robicheax's chagrin, triumphs.

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