Customer Reviews
Middling - By: Timothy De Ferrars, 02 Oct 2008 
Dave Robicheaux & Clete Purcell are their usual selvesin James Lee Burke's latest novel, but they seem spread too thin against the landscape of Montana: I look forward to their return to the claustrophobic & humid parish of New Iberia.
Swann Peak is Burke's most uneven novel for some time. The characters are as vivid & morally ambivalent as always, but much as I wanted the plot twists to be sublime, they were too often ridiculous.
I'm left with the impression perhaps of a tired author who is drawing breath after the remarkable Tin Roof Blowdown; & certainly of an author who is capable of much better.
Magnificent... but Flawed (4.5 *stars) - By: G. J. Oxley, 13 Sep 2008 
This is the first Dave Robicheux novel since `Black Cherry Blues' to take the deputy sheriff out of his home state of Louisiana (laid to waste after Hurricanes Katrina & Rita) & into the mid-west farmlands of Montana. Not coincidentally, these are also the two states that James Lee Burke calls his home. Here Robicheux is enjoying a trip with his wife Molly & big buddy Cletus Purcell, where they're ranch house guests of Robicheux's friend Albert Hollister - a retired English professor & writer.
Virtually from page one - which depicts Purcell doing a spot of solo fishing - there's trouble. Two employees of Ridley Wellstone, an extremely rich Texan oil man who has relocated to Montana, inform Purcell he's on private land, insult him, break his fishing rod (a VERY bad idea) & chase him.
From there the action kicks off as Robicheux & Purcell become entangledin events at Wellstone's mansion - which he shares with his badly burnt brother Lesley & Lesley's wife Jamie Sue - & the search for a serial killer.
In a parallel plot, 6ft 5in prison guard Troyce Nix violently sodomises country singer Jimmy Dale Greenwood, a prisonerin his care, & pushes this gentle guy into attacking him with a homemade shiv. Nix is badly injured but recovers after a short spellin hospital. He then pursues his attacker, accompanied by a lady friend he picks-up along the way. His pursuit of Greenwood becomes inextricably linked with the Robicheux/Wellstone story, & there's a crossover of characters into both plotlines that Burke controls brilliantly.
`Swan Peak' is the seventeenth novelin the series & displays all the strengths & weaknesses of the best of the books.
The strengths? The sheer impassioned poetry of the writing & the vividly described locales; the action scenes of measured brutality; the finely nuanced language & expertly developed sub-plots (even if they're the SAME ones he recycles, novel after novel!) If you've never read Mr Burke before you'll be stunned by the literacy on display: this is very powerful stuff.
The weaknesses? EVERY James Lee Burke character whether they are rich or poor, intellectual or uneducated, speaksin exactly the same way: the same cadences, the same tone & intonation. And each one delivers virtually identical, perfectly articulated insults. I am also a little tired of his predilection for peopling his books with strange-looking or deformed men.
Furthermore, every book has Robicheux describing a character as a `psychopath' virtually upon meeting them, & we are expected to share his snap assessment even though we've been presented with NO evidence to back it up at this stage.
But lets not dwell too long upon the faults, these are easily outweighed by Mr Burke's formidable writing gifts.
The events of 'Swan Peak' take placein a mythical America, & although the setting is contemporary, the action & dialogue could easily have taken placein the 1930s orin any decade between then & now. Some of the slang: button men, gangbangers, 'diming' is also outdated & a little quaint.
As usual, Clete Purcell (an ex-NOPD cop) is more violent than most of the baddies & is like a straining pit-bull on a leash. It takes a few measured words from Robicheux to calm him down, & even then they don't always work. Both men are Vietnam vets, & are still visited by demons created from the horrors they've witnessed. These are very complex guys, & sometimes the line between good & evil is more than a little blurred. This is also the case with Troyce Nix - the most psychologically interesting character the author has createdin a long while.
Lee Burke keeps everythingin focus here & his mastery of situation & plot is neverin doubt - & he delivers a quite fantastic ending. Even after acknowledging his weaknesses he is still palpably one of the greats of modern crime fiction. I can recommend this to fans & those who fancy trying `something different' for a change. Not quite the best bookin the series, I award this 4.5 stars.
One Thing Leads to Another: Karma Creates Connections - By: Donald Mitchell, 26 Aug 2008 Consider Swan Peak a taut Dave Robicheaux thriller about bringing down the bad guys transferred from Katrina-depleted Louisiana to sparking Montana. Since Louisiana is usually the major characterin this series' books, that shift cuts down the local color by one star.
Are there sleazy peoplein Montana? They seem to be everywhere that Dave & Clete Purcell look.
Dave & Molly have left Louisiana to recover from Katrina, & Clete has joined them. Naturally, it doesn't take much for Clete to begin stirring things up. In this case, a choice of campground begins an escalating conflict that no one seems to be able to or wants to avoid.
Pretty soon bodies are piling up around Dave & Clete, but it's not clear what the motives are. Both with & without encouragement, Dave begins investigating. That search draws them both into the business of the local, reclusive rich who want to drill for oil & gas & make lots of money through evangelism. It's an odd group of people, & the closer you look . . . the odder it gets.
In a related story line, a convict looks to do his time & get out . . . but a gun bull has other ideas.
The book's main weakness is that James Lee Burke often tells rather than shows what's going on. At times, you'll feel like you arein a lecture hall rather than reading an engrossing book.
As usual, the story has more slimein it than ten usual murder mysteries. But overcoming the slime is part of the appeal of this series so I'm sure you know what to expect.
Evil's Gravity - By: Mr. M. Alexander, 09 Jul 2008 
James Lee Burke's latest novel, Swan Peak, is another chapterin the life of his troubled character Dave Robicheaux. It is setin 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 & grazing land.
This time Dave & 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 intersectionsin his life seem practically predetermined as is the attraction of iron filings for a magnet. There is a sense of evilin 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 & to create such a sense of bad things to come as does James Lee Burke.
The story is set around the rich landowner & some gruesome killingsin the same area. It has, rather like an airliner, a smooth & progressive glide slope to a climax rather than a landing. As a reader one is drawn & even captivated by each turn of the screw.
Woven into this story are some old & 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 & 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 & I'm glad to say the author still retains those qualities of writing that attracted me to the Robicheaux novels all those years ago.
"The world respect(s) brute force and brute force alone, no matter what people claim." - By: Mary Whipple, 09 Jul 2008 (3.5 stars) Following the decimation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, describedin 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 ranchin western Montana. Robicheaux's long-time buddy Clete Purcell, who accompanies him, has not even started to recover. For Purcell, "the booze he drank & the weed he smoked & the pills he dropped didn't work anymore," & Robicheaux is desperately afraid for his friend.
Within days of their arrivalin 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 crashedin the mountains. Purcell has long been suspected of having been involvedin 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 nowin the same area of Montana, near Missoula & Flathead Lake, as Jimmy Dale. In yet additional plot lines, two young college students are found tortured & murderedin the hills behind the ranch where Robicheaux & Purcell are staying, & a Hollywood producer making a film nearby, & his companion, are shot & burned at a highway rest stop. As these disparate plot threads begin to overlap & explodein violence, Robicheaux & Purcel are up to their eyeballsin the action.
Author James Lee Burke's vaunted ability to create vibrant characters & convey atmosphere through stunning descriptions is on full display herein Big Sky Country, with its fiercely independent residents & 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, & though there are a few hints that one or two characters may,in time, set their livesin order, most "want their enemies hosed down with a flamethrower." Long biographies of the many individual characters provide their unfortunate backgrounds & suggest reasons for their violent behavior, though they do not do not explain the rare glimpses of empathy we seein some characters.
A climactic scene of non-stop action, killing, & near death experiences attempts to show the ultimate connections among the characters & 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 & complex plot lines for four hundred pages, I expected a little more. Mary Whipple
