 |
|
| Crusader's Cross
- Reviews |
July 2005, A Dave Robicheaux novel
Star review from KIRKUS:
Hints about the fate of a warmhearted prostitute who vanished long ago plunge Dave Robicheaux into violence, revenge, betrayal and serial murder.
Back in 1958, Dave's brother Jimmie, vacationing on Galveston Island, tried to get Ida Durbin to leave the life and run off with him. Instead, she disappeared as completely as a puff of smoke. Now dying bully Troy Bordelon links Ida's fate to the wealthy, powerful Chalons family. Dave is content to let the past lie, but a couple of thuggish cops aren't. When they push him, he pushes back as hard as ever (Last Car to Elysian Fields, 2003, etc.). Meanwhile, a serial killer responsible for the abduction, rape and murder of 30 victims extends his reach from New Orleans to Iberia Parish. Dave is obsessively determined to tie the killer to the Chalons family as well. Patriarch Raphael Chalons just wants Dave to go away; his daughter Honoria wants Dave's body; his son Valentine, a celebrity journalist, wants to destroy his life. And although Dave can't accommodate Honoria--he's busy pursuing an even more unlikely romance--he seems only too eager to help Val, falling off the wagon with disastrously bad timing and getting baited into repeated public indiscretions and acts of violence.
The result--a mixture as explosive as any in Dave's checkered history, yet clearer in its outlines and miraculously free of fustian--is Burke's best book in years.
From LIBRARY JOURNAL:
Dave Robicheaux (Last Car to Elysian Fields ) has always been haunted by the past, so it's no surprise that the past collides with the present in this 14th novel featuring one of fiction's greatest characters. When Dave and his brother, Jimmie, were teenagers, Jimmie fell hard for a young prostitute who was trying to get out of the business and who vanished soon after. Almost half a century later, a dying man whispers the woman's name to Dave, and soon Jimmie is out searching for her, with Dave unwillingly assisting in the pursuit. At the same time, Dave is tracking down a serial killer, trying to limit his involvement with a wealthy family who seems to have it out for him, and becoming romantically involved with a local nun. Never one to avoid trouble or confrontation, he manages to juggle all these complications in his own ham-handed, well-intentioned way. The story is a little crowded, but Burke's well-drawn characters and evocative writing more than compensate. Another winner from a master writer, this is recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ 3/1/05.]-Craig Shufelt, Lane P.L., Oxford, OH
"Burke masterfully combines landscape and memory in a violent, complex story peopled by sharply defined characters who inhabit a lush, sensual, almost mythological world." (starred review)
Publishers Weekly (06/06/2005)
"Speaking in their weird and wonderful tongues, [Burke's]...characters add their voices to a regional story that takes its collective identity from the sum of their lives."
New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio (07/10/2005)
"[A] blazing book...[T]he plotting and the scene-setting are, as always, marvelously evocative and sustained."
Literary Review - Philip Oakes (08/01/2005)
"Surprise lurking in the crevices of a recurring patter: that's nature at its most beautiful, and Burke at his most eloquent." (starred review)
Booklist - Bill Ott (05/01/2005)
|
|
|
|
