Last Car to Elysian Fields

Burke, Will

ISBN 10: 0743533291 ISBN 13: 9780743533294

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audioworks, 2003

Detective Robicheaux investigates a car crash that ended the lives of three teenage girls, a case that is compromised by a grief-crazed father, a psychologically unbalanced assassin, and a cache of dangerous secrets.

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Review

The refreshing thing about James Lee Burke's new Dave Robicheaux thriller Last Car to Elysian Fields is that Dave, in many details of the case, is allowed to make a mess of things. We always get uneasy when a series detective is too perfect and the death of his wife and the departure of his daughter to college have robbed currently dry alcoholic Dave of his good angels. His bad angel on the other hand, his roughneck detective friend Clete, is still in rumbustious, corner-cutting violent business as he and Dave connect up the dots and find the links between an IRA hit man with a conscience, a long-dead blues singer, a priest crusading against illegal dumping and yet another of Dave's disturbed upper-crust exes. The atmosphere is always important here--the glamour, glitz and squalor of New Orleans and the fragile beauty of the Louisiana coastline and swamps. What is particularly significant here, though, is a sense of the characters having spiritual lives as well as a daily grind of coffee and pancakes and sniffing the fresh sea air; James Lee Burke writes thrillers with real heart. --Roz Kaveney