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| LAST CAR TO ELYSIAN FIELDS
- Reviews |
(Robicheaux) Simon & Schuster Fall, 2003
LAST CAR TO ELYSIAN FIELDS/JAMES LEE BURKE
FROM THE JACKET COVER:
For David Robicheaux, there is no easy passage home. New Orleans, and the memories of his life in the Big Easy will always haunt him. So to return there means visiting old ghosts, exposing old wounds, opening himself to new, yet familiar, dangers.
But when Robicheaux, now a police office based in the somewhat quieter Louisiana town of New Iberia, learns that an old friend, Father Jimmie Dolan, a Catholic priest always at the center of controversy, has been the victim of a particularly brutal assault, he knows he has to return to New Orleans to investigate, if only unofficially. What he doesn't realize is that in doing so he is inviting into his life and into the lives of those around him an ancestral evil that could destroy them all.
The investigation begins innocently enough. Assisted by good friend and P.I. Clete Purcel, Robicheaux confronts the man they believe to be responsible for Dolan's beating, a drug dealer and porno star named Gunner Ardoin. The confrontation, however, turns into a stand-off, as Clete ends up in jail and Robicheaux receives an ominous warning to keep out of New Orleans affairs.
Meanwhile, back in New Iberia, more trouble is brewing: three local teenage girls are killed in a drunk driving accident, the driver being the seventeen-year-old daughter of a prominent physician. Robicheaux traces the source of the liquor to one of New Iberia's daiquiri windows, places that sell mixed drinks through drive-by windows. When the owner of the drive-through operation is brutally murdered, Robicheaux immediately suspects the grief-crazed father of the dead teen driver. But his assumption is challenged when the murder weapon turns up belonging to someone else.
A third area of investigation opens up when Father Jimmie asks Robicheaux to help investigate the presence of a toxic landfill near St. James Parish in New Orleans, which in turn leads to a search for the truth to the disappearance many years before of a legendary blues musician and composer. Tying together all these seemingly disparate threads of crime is a maniacal killer named Max Coll, a brutal, brilliant, and deeply haunted hit man sent to New Orleans to finish the job on Father Dolan. Once Coll shows up it becomes clear that David Robicheaux will be forced to ignore the warning to stay out of New Orleans, and he soon finds himself drawn deeper into a viper's nest of sordid secrets and escalating violence that sets him up for a confrontation that echoes down the lonely corridors of his own unresolved past.
A masterful exploration of the troubled side of human nature and the darkest corners of the heart, and filled with the kinds of unforgettable characters that are the hallmarks of his novels, James Lee Burke is in top form in this lush, atmospheric thriller that his fans have come to expect from the master of crime fiction.
James Lee Burke is the bestselling author of twenty-three previous novels, including White Doves at Morning, Jolie Blon's Bounce, Bitterroot, and Purple Cane Road, all New York Times bestsellers. He lives with his wife in Missoula, Montana, and New Iberia, Louisiana.
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