Purple cane road : a novel

by James Lee Burke

Paper Book, 2000

Publication

New York : Doubleday, 2000.

Collection

Highlands

Call number

Fiction B

Physical description

341 p.; 25 cm

Status

Available

Call number

Fiction B

Description

Fiction. Mystery. Suspense. Thriller. HTML:Dave Robicheaux has spent his life confronting the age-old adage that the sins of the father pass onto the son. But what has his mother�??s legacy left him? Dead to him since youth, Mae Guillory has been shuttered away in the deep recesses of Dave�??s mind. He�??s lived with the fact that he would never really know what happened to the woman who left him to the devices of his whiskey-driven father. But deep down, he still feels the loss of his mother and knows the infinite series of disappointments in her life could not have come to a good end. While helping out an old friend, Dave is stunned when a pimp looks at him sideways and asks him if he is Mae Guillory�??s boy, the whore a bunch of cops murdered 30 years ago. The pimp goes on to insinuate that the cops who dumped her body in the bayou were on the take and continue to thrive in the New Orleans area. Dave�??s search for his mother�??s killers leads him to the darker places in his past and solving this case teaches him what it means to be his mother�??s son. Purple Cane Road has the dimensions of a classic-passion, murder, and nearly heartbreaking poignancy-wrapped in a wonderfully executed plot that surprises… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Dorritt

I notice one of the blurbs on the book's jacket calls James Lee Burke "the Faulkner of crime fiction" and I couldn't agree more. With description as spare and terse as the notes in a police blotter Burke brings to life the haunting, corrupt beauty of southern Louisiana and the complex, morally

compromised lives of the people who inhabit the borderlands between polite society and lawlessness, making a convincing argument that most of us dwell closer to the borderlands than we probably care to ackowledge. In the meantime, the plot races from one terse, heartbreaking setpiece to the next, making the story almost impossible to put down. I love how the author assumes his readers are clever enough to infer what is happening; I love how he never uses 10 ordinary words when 2 brilliant words (or a gorgeous simile, or a devastatingly quick flashback, often to the Vietnam War) will suffice; and I love how he challenges the reader to reflect upon what constitutes morality; but, most of all, I love becoming so vested in characters that they have the power to break my heart. By almost any definition, this is a work of literature disguised as crime fiction.

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LibraryThing member ElDoradoHills

Recovering alcoholic and police detective Dave Robicheaux is on a quest to save convicted killer Letty Labiche from death row. During the investigation, he learns that his mother may have been murdered by police many years ago and that his teenage daughter is being pursued by a psychopath. The

pacing is fast, the story is tightly woven, and the reader is in for a great ride!
Susan

| Aug 16, 2007 | edit |

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LibraryThing member CatieN

James Lee Burke never lets me down. Love the Dave Robicheaux series!

LibraryThing member markatread

I probably should not have read this book. A friend of mine insisted that I try one more of the Dave Robicheaux books. I have read 5 of James Lee Burke's books before this one and only liked the first one I read. He is a very capable author and can use words in a very effective way. But the Dave

Robicheaux series has a sameness to them that has worn me out. The books are pretty much the same each time, a psychopath that is threatening some poor girl and Dave is having to battle the crooked and/or stupid police to save lower Louisiana. The villians are always without redemption and to some degree they have to be or we would easily recognize that Dave, and especially his friend Cletus, are criminals themselves.

This one has the added drama of Dave's mother who was killed by someone years ago after she abandoned Dave to a life lived with his brutal, alcoholic father. They are the first set of killers without a conscious. Then there is the psychopath that is brought in to kill a prositiute who ends up trying to court Dave's daughter. Then there are the two black girls that were molested by the psychopath next door that one of them is on death row for killing. There are a lot of women being molested, taken advantage of, and even killed by a whole herd of both indigenous and invading psychopaths. And it is up to Dave and Clete to defend them in book after book. It makes you wonder after awhile why Dave doesn't move to Montana like James Lee Burke did. There probaly are only half again as many psychopaths in Montana as there are in Louisiana.

The major redeeming quality in this book is that it did give me a nomination for Dumbest Scene Award of all the books I read in 2008 for the scene that starts on page 255 (First Edition). It lost out to a scene in The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard. But it was a very close vote.

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LibraryThing member JBreedlove

A little disjointed to start but it turned into a page turner. Once again Robicheaux deals with the maelstrom of south La as he tries to keep his act together day to day. This book also highlights Cletus Purcel a little more than previous novels and that is a good thing. A great sense of place is

Burke's bayou..

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LibraryThing member andyray

Maybe I'm getting used to his Robincheaux books (this is the 10th I've read), but I see formula sticking its boring head throiugh this story. It's still a good piece of fiction because Burke is an unusally good writer.

LibraryThing member addunn3

Dave chases down his mother's killers. Story is set in Louisiana with typical Burke writing.

LibraryThing member ecw0647

Burke, one of my favorite writers, has an extraordinary gift for the use of similes. He can evoke the atmosphere and scenery that sets him way above other writers in the mystery genre. Despite the brutality, violence and corruption, the story intrigues, and Burke continues to develop the character

of Dave Robichaeux, ex- New Orleans cop and now homicide detective for the New Iberia Sheriff’s department. The integration of the past and its influence on the present is a recurring theme in Burke's books. Dave is trying to help Letty Labiche, a woman on death row for having murdered the man who had repeatedly molested her and her sister. That he was a cop meant the girls had little sympathy from the department. During his search for exculpatory evidence, Dave stumbles across Zipper Clum, a New Orleans lowlife who provides Dave with information that provideshim with leads related to the death of Dave's mother many years before. Dave, whose memories of his mother, Mae, are bittersweet, becomes obsessed with finding her murderers, cops in the pay of a local crime family, as it turns out. The investigation becomes messy, as the Labiche case becomes intertwined with his search for his mother's killers. Jim Gable, the political liaison in the governor's office with the New Orleans police department whom Dave has reason to dislike more than most, becomes implicated as does the attorney general, a woman Dave learns had connections with Labiche's parents. In the meantime, a hit man, Johnny Remeta, has taken a liking to Alifair, Dave's daughter. Johnny, too, is involved in the whole sordid mess that resolves into a climax revealing the truth of Mae's murder. Similes can often be overdone, in fact, a recent book I finished by Stuart Woods, Choke, eschewed them completely. Burke indulges in them quite successfully, and they bring a vividness to the ambiance that is quite startling; the scent of musty leaves, a fetid swamp and dank bar cascade the reader's senses. His latest book, [book:White Dove in the Morning], which I purchased and am reading as an e-book, takes place during the Civil War; historical fiction is not his usual milieu, but this is excellent.

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LibraryThing member kerns222

The book does a la la the bayou and la la cyprus and la la the other plants and la la the sunset to lull readers lyrical with the serenity of the southern Louisiana swamps. Then Burke hits you--with unforgiving, brutal, gotta-do-it-cause-I'm-damaged violence that takes your breath.
Wife Bootsie and

daughter are marginal in this buddy duet of killing, beating, punching, and some knifing centered around the ex-drunk, post-PTSD, still detective Robicheaux and his double, the what-Robicheaux-would-have -been-except-for-being saved-by-his-wifelet, the ex-cop, still drunk, bigger-than-any-scumbag, cadillac-prowling, gumshoe friend Clete.
Burke cannot push the series any farther without having the rage destroy Robicheaux. Maybe it already has. So I'm wondering what the next installment will do.
And yes the mosquito-infested bogs are beautiful in Burke's writing. Makes you want to go visit.

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LibraryThing member judithrs

Purple Cane Road. James Lee Burke. 2000. Dang, I guess I thought this was the second Dave Robicheaux novel because it was about the murder of his mother. And I planned to start with the first book and read forward until I get to the ones I’ve already read. This is the eleventh book in the

series!! And I put the second book in Library Thing so I must have read it, at some point, but I don’t remember it! Anyway this is another great Robicheaux novel in which he wrestles with good and evil. He is married to Bootsie and has the bait shop on the river and Alafaire is teenager, is going to AAS, and to mass. Clete is present in all his psychotic glory. He does find the true story of his mother’s death which will bring him some peace. I love these books. Lots of violence and lots of delicious Cajun names!

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LibraryThing member repb

This book should have ended much sooner than it did. I'm surprised there was anyone left alive at all. A marvelous storyteller, Burke needs a strong person to tell him he's gone too far with the violence.

LibraryThing member john.cooper

Probably one of the better entries in the Dave Robicheaux series; I've read eight of its ten predecessors, and I'd say this one comes in second to A Stained White Radiance. Unlike some of the Robicheaux stories, the plot is comprehensible and ties itself up neatly; the villains are believable; and

the hero, though constantly in danger of going over the edge, manages (with the help of his friends) to keep from messing up his own life too distressingly. Am I damning with faint praise? I admit I'm getting weary of the formula, and would like to see Dave's family, if not Dave, have the occasional shot at a carefree day or two. And a little humor would go a long way. But let's not forget the unique virtues that Burke brings the reader, which include an unusual insight into the human flaws of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people, an unmatched ability to describe the peculiar natural environment of southern Louisiana, and at the root of it all, a deep love for human beings, however bad a few of them may be.

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LibraryThing member jepeters333

Dave Robicheaux has spent his life confronting the age-old adage that the sins of the father pass onto the son. But what has his mother's legacy left him? Dead to him since youth, Mae Guillory has been shuttered away in the deep recesses of Dave's mind. He's lived with the fact that he would never

really know what happened to the woman who left him to the devices of his whiskey-driven father. But deep down, he still feels the loss of his mother and knows the infinite series of disappointments in her life could not have come to a good end.

While helping out an old friend, Dave is stunned when a pimp looks at him sideways and asks him if he is Mae Guillory's boy, the whore a bunch of cops murdered 30 years ago. The pimp goes on to insinuate that the cops who dumped her body in the bayou were on the take and continue to thrive in the New Orleans area.

Dave's search for his mother's killers leads him to the darker places in his past and solving this case teaches him what it means to be his mother's son

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