Swan Peak: A Dave Robicheaux Novel
by James Lee Burke
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Book Summary Information
Author: James Lee BurkeEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2008-07-08
ISBN: 1416548521
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Book Reviews of Swan Peak: A Dave Robicheaux Novel
Book Review: "The world respect(s) brute force and brute force alone, no matter what people claim."
Summary: 4 Stars
(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
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