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Swan Peak (Dave Robicheaux Mysteries)

Author: James Lee Burke
Publisher: ibooks
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

2 reviews
Sales Rank: 1194

Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Simon & Schuster Hardcover Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.5

ISBN: 1416548521
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781416548522
ASIN: 1416548521

Publication Date: July 1, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars

Evil's Gravity July 9, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

James Lee Burke's latest novel, Swan Peak, is another chapter in the life of his troubled character Dave Robicheaux. It is set in the wilds of Montana rather than the lush lands of Louisiana. An early novel, Black Cherry Blues was similarly set against the Montana backdrop of mountains and grazing land.
This time Dave and his friend Cletus Purcell are ostensibly taking a well earned break from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. At one point Dave reflects, in a beautifully constructed paragraph, of how the intersections in his life seem practically predetermined as is the attraction of iron filings for a magnet. There is a sense of evil in the first few pages as Clete is bullied by some unpleasant characters who move him off the territory of a rich landowner. It is surely a craft of very few authors to write so infectiously and to create such a sense of bad things to come as does James Lee Burke.
The story is set around the rich landowner and some gruesome killings in the same area. It has, rather like an airliner, a smooth and progressive glide slope to a climax rather than a landing. As a reader one is drawn and even captivated by each turn of the screw.
Woven into this story are some old and some new characters along with just a hint of romance. One or two descriptions of the Montana environment are reminiscent of early Lee Burke writing about Louisiana and I have to say I wish there were more of these.
Quite where Lee Burke gets his material from is a mystery but how he creates such an art from whatever the source is very impressive. It is, yet again, a great read and I'm glad to say the author still retains those qualities of writing that attracted me to the Robicheaux novels all those years ago.

4 out of 5 stars

"The world respect(s) brute force and brute force alone, no matter what people claim." July 9, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

(3.5 stars) Following the decimation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, described in James Lee Burke's last novel, The Tin Roof Blowdown (Dave Robicheaux Mysteries), long-time New Iberia Parish detective Dave Robicheaux has accepted an invitation to recover emotionally on a ranch in western Montana. Robicheaux's long-time buddy Clete Purcell, who accompanies him, has not even started to recover. For Purcell, "the booze he drank and the weed he smoked and the pills he dropped didn't work anymore," and Robicheaux is desperately afraid for his friend.

Within days of their arrival in Montana, the past catches up with them. Clete Purcell runs afoul of two thugs, one of whom once worked for a Nevada gangster who was killed with his entourage when their small plane crashed in the mountains. Purcell has long been suspected of having been involved in the crash. These two thugs now work for wealthy Ridley Wellstone, who is financing a charismatic ministry operated by his young wife. Running parallel to these two plot threads is the story of Jimmy Dale Greenwood, a young man horribly abused by a "gunbull" during a two-year prison sentence. His abuser is now in the same area of Montana, near Missoula and Flathead Lake, as Jimmy Dale. In yet additional plot lines, two young college students are found tortured and murdered in the hills behind the ranch where Robicheaux and Purcell are staying, and a Hollywood producer making a film nearby, and his companion, are shot and burned at a highway rest stop. As these disparate plot threads begin to overlap and explode in violence, Robicheaux and Purcel are up to their eyeballs in the action.

Author James Lee Burke's vaunted ability to create vibrant characters and convey atmosphere through stunning descriptions is on full display here in Big Sky Country, with its fiercely independent residents and its spectacular natural resources. Despite the setting, however, the novel is extremely dark, filled with tormented, if not tortured, characters, all of whom are at the mercy of forces they cannot control. Extreme coincidence guides much of the action here, and though there are a few hints that one or two characters may, in time, set their lives in order, most "want their enemies hosed down with a flamethrower." Long biographies of the many individual characters provide their unfortunate backgrounds and suggest reasons for their violent behavior, though they do not do not explain the rare glimpses of empathy we see in some characters.

A climactic scene of non-stop action, killing, and near death experiences attempts to show the ultimate connections among the characters and the plot lines, but the author never explains how some of the characters actually extricate themselves from the critical scene. Even Dave Robicheaux, the narrator, admits, "In truth, I cannot tell you with any exactitude what happened [that night]." Somehow, after following so many damaged characters and complex plot lines for four hundred pages, I expected a little more. Mary Whipple