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| SWAN PEAK
- Reviews |
July, 2008 (a Robicheaux novel)
Robicheaux has come to Montana with his wife, Molly, and friend Clete Purcel, in order to escape the desolate mood of post-Katrina Louisiana. Clete in particular has been shattered by the devastation of his beloved New Orleans, and hopes that a little fishing will supply the balm for his sadness. But while fly casting at an isolated creek, his reverie is broken by the not-so-veiled threats of two thugs, who inform him that he is trespassing on the Wellstone Ranch. Unfortunately, one of them also recognizes Clete from his former association with mobster Sally Dio, whose death in a plane crash which devoted readers will remember from the third Robicheaux novel, Black Cherry Blues, still haunts Purcel.
Ridley Wellstone, the visitors quickly learn, is a wealthy interloper with designs that stretch far beyond the perimeters of his property. One of his many antagonists is Albert Hollister, the retired English professor who plays host to the Robicheaux party. So it hardly seems coincidental when the body of a college student, murdered in brutal execution style, is found near Albert's property, not far from the body of the dead boy's raped and murdered girlfriend. Wellstone could well be behind these killings as well as those of another couple found near the interstate but his motive is unclear. Dave has some instincts, and is soon drafted by local law enforcement to help in the investigation, but he finds that most of his time is spent keeping loose-cannon Clete out of trouble.
Clete has taken a dangerous liking to Jamie Sue Wellstone, erstwhile country singer and wife of Ridley's brother, Leslie. Jamie Sue has that effect on men, and unbeknownst to her, she is also being shadowed by her former lover, Jimmy Dale Greenwood. Jimmy Dale is on the lam from the Texas contract prison he has recently escaped after nearly killing the volatile, sodomizing prison director Troyce Nix. Barely patched together, Nix, who left the military in disgrace after serving at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, has come north in pursuit of Jimmy Dale. Dave knows Nix is trouble from the first moment he spots him, at a revival meeting run by another shifty character, Reverend Sonny Click, who seems to have his own affiliations with the mysterious Wellstones.
As all these strands converge, Dave and Clete encounter a tangled web of violence and even face death at the hands of a faceless adversary, the narrative building with an unusual amalgam of grace and terror. SWAN PEAK is vintage James Lee Burke, doled out with what the Los Angeles Times, praising the last Robicheaux book, The Tin Roof Blowdown, has called his ?almost hypnotic style, filled with poetic description, street wisdom, the occasional hard-boiled flourish and a sort of woozy neo-existentialism.
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